Floor Statements

Mr. President, we did have a brief time yesterday to begin exploring the multiple flaws and deception in this legislation. I believe it would be useful today to begin by touching on a few of those flaws.

I have taken the suggestion of my colleague and friend from Massachusetts, Senator Kennedy, and looked very carefully at the Record of yesterday's proceedings, and here are a few things worth noting.

In response to my remarks and those of Senator Alexander, we were repeatedly told yesterday that it was perfectly all right to federalize the programs of State and local labor relations of States like mine and Senator Alexander's and at least 20 others to, in effect, tell those States that the Democratic decisions of their sovereign governments and their citizens simply did not count, that the Federal Government knows best, that the Federal Government will tell those States what their law must be and how they must conduct their labor relations with their own employees. In essence, the citizens and legislators of a near majority of States are being told by the proponents of this bill that they know better what will work for those States.

As Senator Alexander put it so well yesterday, this bill is really about States like Massachusetts or New Jersey telling States like mine or his, and at least 20 others, how best to deal with their employees and how to fashion their own State laws in the total absence of any need to do so. Now, I completely reject that. However, for those who support it, they owe it to themselves to at least be consistent in their approach. They are not. While they would deny a near majority of States the right to determine what they believe to be the best approach to public sector labor relations within their States, they staunchly defend the right of a small minority of States to deny public employees the most fundamental democratic rights in the workplace.

Five States--New York, New Jersey, Illinois, New Hampshire, and Massachusetts--all home to the sponsors of this bill, have card check laws for their public workers. Those States have decided this is the way they intend to conduct the labor relations among their employees. I respectfully disagree. I believe that approach to be antidemocratic, and it is certainly contrary to the Federal labor policy which preserves for workers in the private sector the right to a democratic secret ballot in deciding the question of unionization.

However, we are told by the proponents of this bill that this fundamental workplace issue is a matter of State choice, while at the same time being told that any State's choice to elect a different system of labor law than that imposed by H.R. 980 is not. Denying workers a secret ballot election on unionization is somehow a matter of local choice, but deciding to utilize and meet and confer on a system of labor management relations or to decide the issue by local option is not.

The inconsistency and hypocrisy of that position is nothing short of stunning. It is utterly indefensible.

At least that issue is addressed by Senator Hatch's amendments. That amendment will at least end that hypocrisy by expressly overturning antidemocratic card check laws for public sector employees in New York, New Jersey, New Hampshire, Illinois, and Massachusetts. While we should not impose Federal law on States at all, if we ought to do it, we ought to do it consistently.

Now, lastly, I want to note that yesterday my colleague and great friend from Massachusetts indicated that if the bill were half as bad-- he reiterated it again today--half as bad as I had indicated in my remarks, he would be against it as well. I take my friend at his word but do not ask that he take me at mine.

Late yesterday, the leaders received a letter from Michael Bloomberg, the mayor of New York, regarding H.R. 980.

I wish to remind everyone that New York has a full collective bargaining statute covering public safety officers. I also wish to remind everyone that we are told by all of the proponents of this bill that because of this, New York would not be affected by this law.

Here is what Mayor Bloomberg had to say in his letter to Leaders Reid and McConnell:

I am writing to express my serious concerns about

legislation before the Senate which would alter the current

state of collective bargaining between the City of New York

and a number of its unions. The legislation has the potential

to harm both New York City and New York State labor

relations.

As you are aware, the Public Safety Employer-Employee

Cooperation Act of 2007 is a bill that would significantly

expand the jurisdiction of the Federal Labor Relations

Authority, FLRA, into the labor relations between State and

local governments and their public safety officers.

Though the bill may be well intentioned, its fundamental

problem from the point of view of New York is that it does

not clearly distinguish States like New York that have long

provided collective bargaining rights to their employees from

States that have not.

Under the bill, States with long histories of collective

bargaining face the risk of having their labor relations with

public safety officers Federalized to the detriment of long-

established public policies.

For over 40 years, the New York City Collective Bargaining

Law and the New York State Public Employees Fair Employment

Act, also referred to as the Taylor Act, have provided a

legal framework for public sector collective bargaining in

the City of New York. There has been extensive administrative

and judicial review of virtually every aspect of this legal

framework. The bill has the potential to undermine this long-

established framework.

One problem is the bill's treatment of the ability of

public safety employees to strike. The New York State Taylor

Law currently contains a clear and unequivocal prohibition on

all strikes by public sector employees and explicit

penalties, such as substantial fines against the individual

members for violations of the no-strike provision.

The language in the proposed language before the Senate is

less clear. The City is very concerned that section 6 of this

bill can be read to prohibit only a strike that would

measurably disrupt the delivery of emergency services.

This language, while it may not be intended to limit the

prohibition in this way, is an invitation to

misinterpretation and litigation. In addition, the same

section could encourage employees to refuse to carry out

services that many believe are not required under the

mandatory terms and conditions of employment in situations

where the public safety might be immediately affected by such

a refusal.

The mayor of New York goes on to say:

Another serious problem with the bill is that it gives FLRA

the authority to decide what must be collectively bargained.

New York has longstanding legal precedent regarding what are

mandatory, permissive and prohibited subjects for collective

bargaining. Under section 4 of the bill, such long-

established legal precedent could be overturned by the FLRA.

A notable example is that disciplinary procedures for

police officers and firefighters, including due process, are

provided for in the New York City Charter and administrative

code and are prohibited subjects of bargaining. The New York

Court of Appeals confirmed as recently as 2006 that these

procedures may not be subject to bargaining, but the bill

would give the FLRA the authority to decide otherwise.

I think that is a point we made yesterday.

A decision by the police commissioner, for example, as to

whether or not discipline should be brought against a police

officer involved in a shooting incident is something for

which he remains fully accountable to the public. It is of

grave concern to the City that it could be forced to bargain

over such procedures as a result of an improper finding by

the FLRA, and such public accountability would thereby be

lost.

Even if the FLRA does not interfere with precedent that

restricts bargaining in sensitive areas like discipline, the

bill at a minimum would provide an additional means for such

precedent to be challenged repeatedly in Federal court,

resulting in an extended period of uncertainty.

In the final analysis, the bill could significantly affect

the ability of the City of New York to ensure the safety of

the public in the integrity of essential government services,

and is likely, at a minimum, to involve the city in costly

and disruptive litigation in Federal court.

Any remedy of these concerns should be achieved in

statutory language, not merely in legislative history. Given

the serious concerns the proposed bill raises for the City of

New York, I oppose the bill in its current form.

Sincerely, Michael R. Bloomberg, Mayor.

As I showed yesterday, there are more than 20 States that will have their laws overturned by this, and 12 more whose laws could be challenged in court.

They recognize that. Calls we are getting, letters we are having shared with us indicate that is a concern of those out there who have to deal with these kinds of problems and the gaps the bill language leaves and the new authority of this Federal Labor Relations Authority which hardly anybody has had to deal with in the past. It is not even equipped to handle what is in the bill.

This is an ill-conceived and badly drafted bill that would not only overturn the law in a near majority of States and disregard the democratic will of the legislatures and people in other States, it would plainly disrupt the law and labor relations policies of every State. This is the price that is paid when the proponents of a bill pander to special interests and circumvent the regular order of this body in an attempt to advance fundamentally flawed legislation. The sad truth is, I do not believe this bill can be fixed. I certainly do not believe it can be fixed on the floor of the Senate. It should have been addressed in committee, but we are left with no choice. So we will continue today to take up the floor time of the Senate trying to fix an irretrievably broken, totally unnecessary piece of special interest legislation. Is it any wonder the American public holds Congress in such low disregard?

I haven't had a chance yet to even talk specifically on the employee bill of rights amendment and the unfunded mandate option. I will take that opportunity at this point in time. Yesterday, the Senator from Utah, Mr. Hatch, offered a public employee bill of rights amendment. Many of my colleagues have spoken about the tremendous service America's public safety employees give to the public. I believe 100 Senators believe that and want to help, in every way possible, the public safety employees do their job. I am a little concerned that occasionally we think that only through collective bargaining will anybody listen to a suggestion of a public service employee. I have never seen that happen. I am not saying it couldn't happen somewhere in America, but if they are suggesting something for safety, I think people will listen.

A lot of times we don't think of things for safety until after a tragedy such as Charleston. Then we think about what could have been done, and it is shared with the Nation. A lot of that is put into place, not through collective bargaining, through common sense. You want to protect the lives of the people who work for you; that is, the people who work for the people of the United States, work for the people in the communities. The toughest job in America is being a mayor because you are right there with the people. They can grab you by the shirt collar--you usually don't have any kind of security--and explain in no uncertain terms what they are thinking. Usually, they have a pretty good idea, not just a complaint but a complaint coupled with a suggestion.

I know, on any given day, one of these officers could be asked to put his or her life on the line, and they do so courageously. I agree with my colleagues that individuals who choose these careers deserve respect, gratitude, and special treatment. But the underlying amendment would actually

result in diminishing the rights of public safety employees who are not currently unionized. Once a workforce is unionized, even employees who do not wish to be a part of the union will have pay deducted from their paychecks and spent in a manner outside their control. They will have little ability to question or alter the legal representation established with or without their support. The Hatch amendment merely balances that diminution of self-determination by establishing a public bill of rights. The amendment will do three things. It guarantees the right to vote by a secret ballot. It guarantees to limit the right of public unions' dues collection authority to nonpolitical uses. It guarantees that financial transparency will be there. By ensuring that public safety employees in all States have the right to vote on whether they unionize by secret ballot, the Hatch amendment guarantees for public safety employees the same right private employees now have in many States. In a democratic society, nothing is more sacred than the right to vote. It is undeniable that nothing ensures truly free choice more than the use of a private ballot.

The possibility of coercive or threatening behavior toward employees who may not wish to form a union is even more concerning in the context of public safety employees who rely on coworkers to reduce the deadly risks they face routinely in the course of their work. The amendment would also limit the right of public unions' dues collection authority to nonpolitical uses. Those who choose public service often accept lower pay than they might make in the private sector because they are dedicated to public service. Let's not insult that choice by allowing labor bosses to take money from paychecks and spend it on purely political causes the employee does not support. I believe public employees should have the same protections from fraud and abuse as private employees. This amendment would empower public employees by allowing them to observe how their dues are being spent and the other financial dealings of their unions. It does this by bringing public unions under the requirements of the Labor Management Reporting and Disclosure Act. That is a 1959 law enacted with bipartisan support, including then-Senator John F. Kennedy. Public employees who pay union dues, especially those who are compelled to do so against their wishes, are no less entitled to financial transparency and fraud protections than private sector employees covered under the law today.

In regard to the Alexander amendment, I don't think there is any doubt that the bill's mandates would increase costs for States and localities that are either now unionized or do not allow bargaining to the extent required under the law and will, therefore, be subject to new rules. We have heard the argument that this has to be approved by a legislative body. There is also the clause in there about what the Federal Labor Relations Authority can do with any agreements that come up. I assume that would be if they didn't think they were tough enough. The costs I am concerned about go far beyond any increased pay or work scheduling costs.

The bill's most burdensome mandate falls on small towns that will have to assemble collective bargaining resources and capability on short notice. We keep looking at the 5,000 figure like it is magic. Five thousand is a very small town, and many of them already have difficulty complying with current Federal unfunded mandates. But we are going to impose one more on them. I don't want people to think the small town exemption is really just set at 5,000 population. The bill says 5,000 population or 25 employees. Towns have to hire a lot of people to run the facilities that we take for granted. We expect to turn on our faucet and have the water there. We expect to flush the toilet and have it disappear. We expect to set our garbage out and have somebody pick it up. We expect the streets to be in good condition so they are safe. A lot of places we expect sidewalks to be there so pedestrians don't have to be on the street. We even have in some municipalities the provision of electricity.

Gillette, WY, was so isolated and had so few people at one time that nobody wanted to provide electricity. So the city provided it. That has been a growing entity with employees. But it always required quite a few employees for doing the pole work and the meter work and the electrical work that was necessary. So 25 employees is a pretty easy threshold to get to in a small town. So 5,000 population or 25 employees, don't forget the 25 employees part.

The costs I am concerned about go beyond increased pay and work scheduling costs. This bill will also require them to assemble collective bargaining resources and capability, and on very short notice. I think that means that since the union will be able to bring in a negotiator, the city, the town--in Wyoming, 5,000 is a first-class city--will have to bring in different legal and bargaining experts to help with the negotiations, at least to train them to know how to negotiate. That will happen on both sides.

So this requires actions such as hiring labor law experts and establishing contracts with arbitrators, all resources that may be in short supply since small towns all across the country will be facing the same mandate at the same time.

As the former mayor of Gillette, I know what it is like to balance a municipal budget. When the Federal Government imposes costly new mandates and provides no funds to pay for them, it is frustrating for the mayor and the council and anybody who works for the city. When I became mayor, it was a boom town. The town had recognized the need to have better sewer treatment facilities. We had applied to the Federal Government. We had received a grant. Just as I took office, this new sewer treatment facility went on line. The inspector showed up and said: Your town has grown so much, you are violating the capacity of your sewer system. Since we provided the money for it, we are going to fine you.

So I needed a new sewer treatment facility. I needed several million dollars' worth of new sewer treatment facility. So I went back to the source. The Federal Government said: That one wasn't adequate because of the growth you have had. They said: Sorry, you already got one grant. You wind up at the bottom of the list now. So thousands of communities across the United States, probably rightfully, got to be ahead of my community. But that didn't stop the fines. Fortunately, I got a judge who said:. Yes, we have to fine you, but we are going to make you pay that money into a fund to build a new sewer treatment plant. That helped a little bit because we still had the money to do something, but we were still being put under this Federal mandate, which is a good idea. You need to do adequate sewer treatment. That is very important. But how do these small towns afford that? There are thousands of them, and they are all going to be put under that law at the same time. There aren't enough people trained to help them do this. So the burden falls on the taxpayers. The taxpayers elect local officials who will pursue their priorities and collect taxes at a level to cover the cost of those priorities. That is partly right. You don't always have the right to increase taxes. There are State limits in many of the States that say how much a municipality can tax. So that option may be closed down. This bill upsets the democratic order by imposing Federal priorities on local taxpayers with no way to pay for them. Local governments don't have ``funny money'' gimmicks like the Federal Government. Increased costs have to result in increased taxes, such as sales tax, property tax or decreased services. So which of those 25 employees are we going to get rid of in order to meet the costs of this bill? You can say it is not a Federal mandate because we have some definitions that explain what a true Federal mandate is, but I think the towns will consider it to be a Federal mandate. So will the people who are taxed or lose services or who are taxed and lose their jobs.

This is a choice I believe we should leave to local government. The Alexander amendment would leave it up to them by allowing localities to opt out of the bill's requirements, if they determine it will increase local property taxes, compromise public safety or constitute an unfunded mandate.

I yield the floor.

Mr. President, I ask unanimous consent that the order for the quorum call be rescinded.

Mr. President, I ask unanimous consent to set aside the quorum call so that I can answer some of the questions that have been asked on the other side.

Madam President, we had one speaker from my side and then a colloquy with some people from my side who were involved with the Senator from Virginia, but I don't think that can hardly be charged to my side.

I thought I was in charge of half of the time, and I didn't allocate that time. I can see how the rules go here.

Reserving the right to object, until I get 5 minutes to rebut a little bit of what the leader said about the collective bargaining bill. I do not need much time, but I was cut out of the process earlier today and I deserve the opportunity.

Ten will be plenty. I appreciate it.

That would be part of the unanimous consent? Do I understand that under the unanimous consent I would get my 10 minutes before the farm bill.

Mr. President, I appreciate the leader's kind remarks. I have been diligently working on the collective bargaining bill. It is an important part of the process to get the full debate out. We are being precluded from that process now.

We have had three amendments brought up. None of those were mine. I have five amendments that I would like to have debated that address what

I see as serious flaws in the bill, but I am being precluded from even bringing up one of those. I was given the offer, take it or leave it, that there could be two Republican amendments, period, and I could decide from among my own and others which would be the two.

As I pointed out at the very beginning of this bill, this bill is flawed. It did not go to committee. This happens every time a bill does not go to committee. We have a process with bills before the committee where people can sit down and look at amendments and revise the amendments until there is agreement between the two sides. That is the only reason that a committee such as Health, Education, Labor and Pensions can get bills done.

We often take a look at all of the amendments when they are in committee and decide that we will work on those before they go to the floor. Otherwise, as contentious a committee as we have, which handles the volume of work it does, we would get nothing done. But we get a lot done. In fact, last week when we were at the signing with the President of one of the bills we passed, the President said: You know, you are the only committee sending us any bills. It is because we go through the whole process.

Usually Senator Kennedy and I sit down, we list our principles, we agree on the principles, we plug in some details, and then we talk with the stakeholders. That is everybody with an interest in it. Usually at that point there is someone who says: No, we have one provision we have worked on for 12 years, and we never have gotten that provision. And until we get that provision, we don't care about the rest of the bill. Whoever's constituent it is, Senator Kennedy or I, we take the lead on it and say: You know, you have been asking for it for 12 years and you got nothing. How would you like to get the other 80 percent that you also claim you like? That is the way we do bills. It is working to get common ground, which is a third way.

There are so many issues around here that have been polarized, so the second they come up people jump into the weeds. They talk about a little glitch here or there that irritated people in the past and that gets us nowhere. So we have been able to elevate that to coming up with a third way to achieve the same thing, the same principles we agreed on.

This bill didn't go through any of that process. We just slammed right over here to the floor of the Senate and then they are surprised at the result, that we want to do a few amendments. I saw the House bill, and then I saw the negotiations with some of the Senate people from our side on some amendments that they thought were critical. A lot of those didn't get in at all, even though I think a few of them thought they were in there. They are not in there. That is what I am bringing up--what were good ideas that ought to be contained in this kind of a bill so the rhetoric we have had so far actually winds up meeting what is in the bill.

That is our job. It is really supposed to come out doing what we said it would do. This bill does not do what the chairman said it would do. This bill doesn't say what the Republican cosponsors said it would do. It could be clarified. It is not easy to clarify it when we are out on the Senate floor. It is difficult to do out here because it is more of a take it or leave it. In fact, that is what I was offered: take it or leave it on getting two amendments. What kind of a choice is that? I have five germane amendments and many other germane amendments have also been filed and offered. But, of course, I will have to get unanimous consent to bring up my amendments later if at all. Unanimous consent is not the easiest thing to get around here, particularly when it starts getting into this little friction area.

I want to comment on the 71 filibusters. I suspect the two motions that were just filed count as two more filibusters. What they are is two more attempts to protect the rights of the minority. We have a right, just as that side did when they were in the minority, to bring up amendments. They protected their right, and we are protecting our right.

You heard one of the cosponsors of the collective bargaining bill make those same comments earlier today when the big discussion happened on the amendment that was put on the other side of the tree. He voted not to table that because he respects the rights of the minority. That is what has always had to happen around here.

I have to tell you, on filibusters, one of the reasons we get filibusters is because there is still a Presidential campaign going on on one side of the aisle, and that means two of our Members are not here except in unusual circumstances. So the way it has to happen is, on Monday when we come in we vote on a cloture motion. It is not legislation that necessarily needs a cloture motion because a lot of those have been passed 98 to 0, 96 to 0, maybe 95 to 1. That is nowhere near a filibuster. But that allows us--that forces us into a situation where, for the next 30 hours, we debate whether to debate. That way, by Wednesday the candidates can show up so there is enough of a vote to agree to some of the amendments that go on there. So part of it is a tactical procedure being used by the majority, who still has a primary going on in their Presidential race, to assure they will have the votes there when the time comes.

You can see this is 51 to 49, so if two people don't show up on that side, it is 49 to 49 and that gives the Vice President a chance to vote. So far he has always voted with me. So that gives the minority a win, and I understand that.

But I do not stand for being blamed for all of those cloture motions that have been put out here. Some of those have been to protect the majority as a majority. They need to take credit for those instead of blaming us for it.

This is a kind of do-nothing Congress. If it were not for bills coming out of this committee there wouldn't be a lot of bills passing out here, but a lot of the failed bills come from skipping the process and coming right to the floor, like the immigration bill. The way to get things done is take them through committee and then we don't need to do as many amendments on the Senate floor.

In fact, if you check back on the bills Senator Kennedy and I worked on, it is very unusual for us to have an amendment on the floor. And they usually pass unanimously here and in the House. That is how they get to the President. There is not a conference committee involved in it. We have already preconferenced with the House and found out what their potential objections were with the House and worked it out. But not on this bill. On this bill what we said--not we said; they said-- you know, the policemen and the firemen are going to be in DC for this big memorial event this week. We ought to time it so we can really put the crush on the Republicans.

I have to give you congratulations for that. It would not be enough just to recognize the tremendous sacrifices these people make and the difficult jobs they have. No, we can make some points against the Republicans because they may want to make sure Government still works when we are done with the process.

There are a lot of people commenting that there are some problems with this bill. The mayor of New York City--that is a State that requires collective bargaining--sent us a letter that said: Don't pass this bill. This will affect the way that we do business. It is not a one-sided thing, but I tell you, when it gets one-sided, nothing happens and that is kind of the process we are in.

I am going to be asking people to vote with me against the cloture motion because I have not been able to bring up my amendments. I haven't been able to get votes on the other side.

That has an interesting little twist to it too. We have four amendments: three that are germane--those are the three the Republicans put in, which means they relate to the bill--and one offered by Senator Leahy that is actually a reauthorization bill on some grant money. It doesn't relate to this bill, but I am willing to have votes on all four of them. I am willing to accept the Leahy amendment and get it done. But there will be objections to that because he chairs the committee that handles judges, and we were promised three circuit court judges before Memorial Day. As I understand it, tomorrow morning there is a markup around here that does not have a single circuit court judge on it, which means that deadline cannot be met.

So, again, protecting minority rights, there are some people on the

Republican side who are saying if they are not going to follow their word, we are not going to follow--The Senator from Vermont then says: If they are not going to take my amendment, then I am not going to allow the other three to be voted on. That happened earlier today.

There is plenty of blame to go around. But to stick it on any one party is the wrong thing to do. And to proclaim that we really want to have this bill done without taking it through the regular process is a misnomer--and I need to have my rights--and I appreciate this time to speak. The majority leader was very kind in that. I appreciate the way he let us at least work for a day, an interrupted day and a partial day at that, before the cloture motion went into effect.

I thank the Chair and yield the floor.

Mr. President, last weekend, when I traveled around Wyoming, it was clear that high energy prices were on everyone's mind. It is a trend I have noticed each and every summer for the past several years. Each year, our constituents ask us to do something to address energy prices. While we talk and talk about what we are doing, rarely do we take any meaningful action.

It is a little different this year because Americans are seeing record prices at the pump. Those voices saying ``get to work on this problem'' are more numerous. They are louder. Will the anguished calls for help make it through the thick and, thus far, shut doors of Congress? Americans are caught in a tight spot. Some are asking: How can I put food on the table when I cannot afford the gas it takes me to get to work? On top of that, the food is more expensive because of the fuel it takes to produce and ship it.

No one in this Chamber has all the answers. No, but we can do something. We can act. We can help. The question for me and my colleagues in the Senate is, will we? We have the opportunity to do so today. We have the opportunity to vote for an amendment that provides short-term relief and, at the same time, helps address the long-term issues that got us into this situation. I am a cosponsor of the McConnell-Domenici amendment, known as the American Energy Production Act of 2008, because it is a responsible way to address the need to produce more domestic energy and to reduce energy prices.

The energy situation we are in has been a long time in the making, and we are not going to fix it overnight. We don't have enough domestic energy to meet our Nation's energy demands, but the American Energy Production Act would help change that. It opens an important sliver of the Arctic National Wildlife Refuge, ANWR, to environmentally conscious leasing and allows for more production from the Outer Continental Shelf, with consent of the State. Doing so will help the United States produce more of its own energy. Instead of sitting at the trough of foreign oil barons with our hands out begging, Americans will produce more American energy.

Later today, I expect to see support for the Dorgan amendment to suspend filling of the Strategic Petroleum Reserve. If you are worried about roughly 70,000 barrels a day staying off the market for this reserve fill, then you should be outraged that 1 million barrels a day from ANWR is kept off the market because it was vetoed by President Clinton more than 10 years ago. That is a million barrels we would not need to purchase from South American dictators, or a million barrels from countries who are friendly to those who wish to destroy the United States.

What will Americans say about this vote 10 years from now? Will they say: Better late than never, because we passed the American Energy Production Act, or will they say: You just didn't get it and now look at us suffer for it. The American Energy Production Act recognizes also that coal is our Nation's most abundant energy source. It recognizes American ingenuity. It recognizes that coal has been turned into diesel fuel for half a century, and it encourages the building of coal-to- diesel facilities in the United States. The United States is the ``Saudi Arabia of coal.'' Wyoming is the leading coal producer in the United States. It makes sense that we use America's most abundant energy source at a time when we all agree we are too dependent upon foreign energy sources.

The amendment also includes a number of important provisions that will help Wyoming and the Nation. The amendment repeals the mineral royalty theft that was included in the fiscal year 2008 Omnibus appropriations bill. It allows development of oil shale to move forward.

I support the idea of developing more alternative energy, the use of wind energy, and the development of better solar energy technologies. As my constituents can tell you, Wyoming is an especially good State for wind, and we have high solar potential as well. While we need to develop these technologies for the long term, we need all the energy we can get.

We need more domestically produced oil, more wind energy, more domestic natural gas, more solar energy, more nuclear energy, and we definitely will need more clean coal energy.

Our Nation's energy policy is haphazard, broken, and it threatens to break our country. We need to make meaningful changes to that policy, and voting in favor of the American Energy Production Act is the first step in the right direction. I hope my colleagues will recognize the need to take this step and support the McConnell-Domenici amendment.

I yield the floor.

Mr. President, once again, we have one of those bills that has never been to committee. I guess we are afraid to take labor issues to the Labor Committee. We ought to be able to review these things and work on them as we do on other kinds of bills, but that is not happening on the labor issues. We are just going to play ``gotcha'' politics.

This bill will take longer than a minute or an hour or a day just to cover some of the flaws that are in this bill. Some of the things that have shown up in the substitute bill never got introduced on this one. So we can see how this doesn't work. This will affect all 50 States. This is an opportunity for you to impose the will of the Federal Government on your State. I don't think you really want to do that. We need to have a little bit more than a minute to discuss that.

I think the leadership is asking for people to vote for this amendment. We have agreed that we would go to it right after lunch. This isn't a matter of stalling out in the Senate; it is a matter of trying to get the right decision made. I ask you to look at these things. It ought to go to the Labor Committee so that reasonable suggestions can be made.

Mr. President, I suggest the absence of a quorum.

Mr. President, I appreciate the opportunity to finally comment on some of these things and to do my opening statement.

I do want to say I was a little surprised by the speech of the Senator from New York, Mr. Schumer, about, primarily, the price of gas. I have to say, he has got it right. That is the biggest concern on the minds of people across this country. No matter what else we are talking about, it is about the price of gas. What I learned from his speech is we are going to be disrupted in this debate later today as the majority leader rule XIVs an energy bill.

I wish to congratulate Senator Domenici for his work on putting together an energy bill which we had a vote on this morning. I really think if that could have been voted on in pieces, a number of those pieces would have passed and made a difference to this country.

I can see that the main thrust of the bill we are going to be interrupted by later to take a look at is one to force Saudi Arabia to increase their production by a million barrels a day or give up some arms purchases from us.

Let's see, if we sell them arms--which I have not looked at enough to know whether that is a good idea--we get some money back. When we force them to do a million barrels a day, we give them $120 million a day. Part of that, which some people do not like, was ANWR. ANWR would produce at least a million barrels of oil a day from the United States. We would be paying people in the United States for the oil, not shipping it over to Saudi Arabia, and we have to worry about what they are going to do with the arms we sell them.

So I can understand they ought to be concerned about gas and are finally

concerned about gas and are going to interrupt us to be concerned about gas, but we had a proposal this morning that should have gotten a little bit more consideration and some of those provisions put into effect so we could actually solve some of our energy problem.

Let's see now, we are going to put the burden on Saudi Arabia.

My first encounter with higher gas prices happened back in 1973. I was president of the Wyoming Jaycees. We did some things to Saudi Arabia they were not very pleased about, and they cut us off completely. That produced the biggest crisis in this country in my memory. We had lines at the gas pumps. We had people who could not transport goods. We had people who could not get gas. We were trying to figure out ways to store gas should we ever get it again. It was because Saudi Arabia said: OK, if that is the way you are going to be, no oil.

Well, at any rate, I do not think we are carrying as big a stick on this as we think we are. We need to be looking at a number of the solutions.

Windfall profits tax--that was a good way for us to drive our companies overseas to do their work, to sell us oil. That does not bring down the price of oil. If I had my way, I would call the energy companies in. I would tell them I want to know what they are doing with however many billions of dollars worth of profit they are making. I want to know about it weekly. And I would report to the American people on a weekly basis. I do not suspect that would bring down the price of oil. I do suspect that would bring up the investment in energy, all kinds of energy. We need to have that done.

So I do not mean to go on and on about this, but as long as we are going to be interrupted in our debate on public employees, I want to make sure I have my say on it too.

Mr. President, I do rise today to voice my opposition to H.R. 980, the so-called Public Employer-Employee Cooperation Act. The fact that this bill has come to the Senate today is just another example of the cynical calculus of election-year politics. We are still doing ``gotcha'' politics on this floor. How do I know that? I know we have not passed a bill that did not go through committee--not just the Health, Education, Labor, and Pensions Committee that I am the ranking member of but the other committees. If it does not go through committee, it does not pass. But here we have an issue that I am told was passed last July by the House. Do you know how many hearings we have held on it? I looked back 4 years, and we have not had a hearing on this one--not a hearing on it.

What we do at hearings is kind of invite people in to tell us some specific points they want to make on a particular bill. Now, you will find that I am not a very big proponent of hearings because the chairman--and I used to be the chairman--gets to invite all the people to the committee except one and the ranking member gets to invite one. Then, people from both sides show up to beat up on the other witnesses. That is not very productive.

We did switch to a system, occasionally, where we have had roundtables. Roundtables are a little bit different than hearings. With roundtables, you invite in 10, 15, 20 people who have actually done something in the area, and you hear what the problems are and what the advantages are, and after all of them have spoken, then they interact with each other. They are not Senators asking clever questions. They interact with each other on ways their ideas fit with somebody else's idea. They come up with some good legislation.

Now, we have not ever had hearings--or roundtables on this issue. So how do you know what is really a good idea? How do you know what the effect is going to be on other people when you do not do anything to prepare for it and then you bring it right to the floor?

Another advantage of going through committee is that you can find out what the concerns are from the amendments when it gets to the markup process. From those amendments, you can say: Well, this might be a good idea, but we have to revise it a little bit. People go off and work on that part of the idea, and they bring it back in a workable fashion that will fit that both sides agree on.

You say it cannot be done on labor issues? Well, in the past we have. We passed a mine safety bill through here in less than 6 weeks, and it passed unanimously in the Senate, and it passed unanimously in the House. That is how we did it. We did it through the committee process. Now, that was the first change in mining law in 28 years, but it was done cooperatively, and it was done through the committee process.

This one has, I guess, purposely circumvented the regular order of the Senate and its committee process because the scrutiny of that process would expose some multiple flaws in the legislation. We are going to have some amendments that will point out what some of the flaws are in this legislation. Now, it is very difficult to do it here. I have to put in an amendment, and we kind of vote it up or we vote it down. We cannot go off and work it out so it is agreeable to both sides. It is a difficult process, especially when you involve 100 people with it. It is much easier to do it in committee.

So we have this bill, and once again we are going to play the election-year spin, going to do sound bites, probably do a lot of press. But I suspect the result may be the same as other things that did not go through committee.

Now, their calculation is simple: Since this bill involves unions that organize among police and firefighters, they will continue to simply claim that anyone who opposes this bill is against police and firefighters. You have already heard it.

Let's address that calculated untruth first. There is no one I know of--Republican or Democrat, supporter or opponent of this bill--who does not respect and value the work and dedication of our police, our firefighters, and other first responders. Their contributions to our communities are immeasurable, and our support for them is unwavering. However, this bill provides no benefit to any police officer, firefighter, or first responder. It does not provide a dime in Federal money to any State, city, or town to hire or to train or to equip any additional public safety personnel. In fact, it only imposes costs that will make that result less likely.

The bill does not contain a dime of Federal money or a word of language that would increase the pay or benefits of any firefighter, police officer or first responder or that would enhance their working conditions or that would make their job safer or make their retirement more secure. It only imposes totally unfunded costs on States, cities, and towns that will make those rules less--not more--likely.

Plain and simple, the only direct beneficiaries of this legislation are labor unions. This bill does nothing more than open new markets for unions, and it provides them with the opportunity for increased revenue from new dues-paying members. This bill does nothing for any police officer, firefighter or first responder, except to provide them with the dubious opportunity to share a portion of their paycheck with the labor union.

The real truth is there is absolutely nothing inconsistent about being fully supportive of our local police and firefighters and first responders and totally opposed to this bill. A vote against this bill is not a vote against first responders. Proponents of this bill would serve both the debate and themselves better by abandoning any absurd claims to the contrary. The public is simply not that gullible, and I think the public is fed up with a Congress that transparently panders to special interests, while trying to tell the rest of the world they are acting in everybody's interests. The old song is out of tune, but as long as some continue to sing it, there shouldn't be any surprise about the fact that the public opinion of Congress is at an all-time low.

Let me now turn for a moment to some of the serious and fundamental problems with this legislation. Over 70 years ago, the Congress passed what is now referred to as the National Labor Relations Act. That legislation has been amended numerous times over the many decades of existence, and it has become universally recognized as the embodiment of our national labor policy. A hallmark of that policy for eight decades has been the well-reasoned principle that the employment and

labor relations between a State, city or town and its own employees should not be a matter of Federal law, but a matter of local law. That bedrock principle is not only rooted in our national labor policy; it is firmly fixed in our Constitution and our traditions of federalism. For more than 70 years, Congress has repeatedly and consistently excluded State and local labor relations from Federal control and intervention. Yet today the proponents of this bill seek to overturn this hallmark principle and to radically change decades of unbroken Federal law and policy. The enormity of this change is only matched by the prospect that it could occur in the wake of an appalling lack of thought, total disregard for the processes of the Senate, and complete absence of any meaningful opportunity for rational debate.

This body has before it a bill that would overturn more than 70 years of unbroken precedent and law. It would raise profound constitutional issues. It would overturn law in a majority of States--in a majority of States--and completely reverse the fundamental and founding principle of our national labor policy. You would think the Senate would consider such a bill only after careful examination and due deliberation. But if you do think that way, sadly, you are wrong. This legislation, as I said, has not had a Senate committee hearing or markup this Congress. I looked back 4 years. I could not find a single hearing or markup on this bill. There has been no meaningful exploration by the HELP Committee this Congress of the important issues that this legislation implicates. This bill grants enormous power over States to a virtually unknown Federal agency that will make critical decisions about these people. Yet we have never so much as asked a representative sampling of State officials about their views, nor have we ever informally asked the Federal agency involved if it feels up to the job we are about to impose on it. These shortcomings alone are ample proof that this bill is being pushed not because it is good policy but only because we see it as expedient politics in an election year.

This bill would require that every State, every city, and every town with more than 5,000 residents would open its police, firefighters, and first responders to unionization. It would impose as Federal mandate-- not in the absence of any State consideration of this issue but in direct opposition to the legislative will of several States.

Proponents of this legislation have attempted to maintain the fiction that it actually does little to disturb State laws--a good way to pass a bill, I guess, but not true. It is simply not the case. Within the last 2 legislative sessions, some 13 States have officially considered and rejected legislative proposals similar to the law that would be federally imposed under H.R. 980. The proponents of this legislation have attempted to maintain the fiction that it wouldn't disturb State laws. Nothing could be further from the truth. Every expert who has reviewed this law has concluded it is clearly in conflict with the current law in at least 22 States, and the chart shows the 22 States. Some believe the number is as high as 26, and even the bill proponents freely concede it is at least 21. All of these States, their citizens, and their legislatures have expressly considered all the issues raised in this bill and have decided on a different approach--a different approach--than what would be required under this bill. Some States have decided to use meet-and-confer laws. Some have placed limits on the enforceability of agreements. Some have limited the subjects of bargaining. Some have made the issue one of local option, and some have decided to limit bargaining by employee function.

States, cities, and towns have done what they think best to provide for the safety and welfare of their own citizens in developing their labor relations policy for their own public safety employees. Yet we propose to clearly overturn the democratic judgment of at least 22 States through this legislation.

Let's be clear. We would take this action not because States have not acted; that is not the case. All these States made a conscious, democratic decision about what is best for their citizens. In fact, some 16 of these States have considered and rejected laws similar to H.R. 980 within the last few years.

Now, the impact, however, doesn't end there. Experts who have reviewed this legislation and existing State laws have identified at least 12 States where this bill would raise serious legal questions about one or more aspects of their existing collective bargaining law. You can see those filled in on the chart. These are States that supposedly have full collective bargaining statutes. Remember: The question of whether an existing State law complies with the requirements of H.R. 980 is going to be figured out later by a little- known Federal agency--the Federal Labor Relations Authority--that is devoid of any experience in State labor relations and isn't accountable to a single State government. I am sure all the technical and legal issues left unclear by this bill, which bear on whether a State law complies, will keep an awful lot of lawyers busy for a long time and guarantee a huge expansion of the Federal labor relations authority.

Now, the effect of this bill, however, goes beyond the States where the law is clearly overturned and where it is probably overturned and where the lawyers will fight about whether it is overturned. By federalizing State labor relations, this bill will affect every State, city, and town in the country. As a matter of State law, States have the authority to effectively take items off the union bargaining table. Many States with collective bargaining laws already do this, particularly in the area of public safety. Manning and staffing levels, training and job requirements, deadly force rules, drug testing, merit pay, job requirements, and promotion are a few of the examples of the terms and conditions of employment which must be bargained but could be exempted from bargaining by State action or a law. Now, once you federalize this law, States will lose that authority.

Look closely at both the Senate and the House language of this bill. It specifically lists only three things a State can exempt or take off the bargaining table: pension, retirement benefits, and in one version, health insurance. Everything else is on the table. That will be the Federal law over which a State can do nothing.

This is a critical problem for every State. States can't be responsible for the safety of their citizens when the Federal Government takes away the authority they need to accomplish the job. Here is one example. Suppose a State decides to implement mandatory drug testing for public safety officers. It can't just do that under Federal law if H.R. 980 passes. Any change such as that would require bargaining. Why would we ever require that any State, city or town bargain or horse trade over matters of public safety?

If you don't think this is a real problem, you need only look at today's paper. The city of Boston has for years sought to negotiate a drug-testing provision with its public safety union. Despite incidents of documented and suspected drug use by Active-Duty personnel, the city has not been able to implement a program. We have seen the same pattern reflected in the utterly shameful situation in Major League Baseball and the inability to achieve any meaningful resolution, despite years and years and years of collective bargaining. Now, here is the difference: Baseball is a game; public safety isn't.

So let us be completely clear about what we propose doing with this legislation. Any vote that advances this bill is a vote to overturn the law and the democratic will of citizens of a near majority of our States. Let me say that again. Any vote that advances this bill is a vote to overturn the law and the democratic will of the citizens of a near majority of our States to create unnecessary question and litigation over the validity of law in many other States and to forever tie the hands and limit the authority of every State to protect the safety of its citizens as it sees best. This legislation is not only directly contrary to over 70 years of Federal labor policy; it further violates the most fundamental, centuries-long principles of federalism and most likely runs completely afoul of the U.S. Constitution to boot.

With all this in mind, we should be asking ourselves: What price is this Congress willing to pay in an effort to ingratiate itself to organized labor?

Earlier this year, Congress transparently pandered to the special interests of organized labor and came perilously close to depriving workers of their democratic right to a secret ballot in deciding the question of unionization. Now we are at it again. This time, however, the price of congressional pandering is the sovereign authority of States and the integrity of their democratic process.

Since even these compelling facts are unlikely to stand in the way of politics, we need to look at the legislation itself. Since it has not been discussed and has not been marked up in the committee of jurisdiction, I suppose at least a few moments of legislative consideration is better than none at all.

In no particular order, here are a few of the multiple and fatal drafting and policy problems of this bill:

First, this bill is the height of hypocrisy by the Federal Government. This bill would require States, cities, and towns over 5,000 to provide full collective bargaining for all their public safety employees. However, while requiring this of States, cities, and towns, the Federal Government would continue to exempt itself from any collective bargaining obligation with regard to many of its public safety employees.

Let's see. We are going to tell States, cities, and towns what to do, but we don't tell ourselves what to do. That sounds like hypocrisy to me.

Second, this law would require States to bargain over wages of their covered employees. However, the Federal Government routinely exempts itself from bargaining over wages with its employees.

I wonder how many Senators bargain with their staff? Moreover, this bill would severely limit--in fact, virtually eliminate--the right of State governments to determine the appropriate subjects for bargaining with their employees--a right fully retained by the Federal Government with regard to its employees.

Third, this legislation forces collective bargaining on States but doesn't require or ensure fundamental employee rights. For example, Federal law preserves the right of the workers in the private sector to decide the issue of unionization by secret ballot. However, this legislation, which imposes collective bargaining on unwilling States, cities, towns, and their employees, not only fails to guarantee the right to a secret ballot in union elections, it specifically ratifies and approves State laws that strip public sector workers from this fundamental democratic right.

Fourth, this legislation is a gift to organized labor that comes with none of the obligations or safeguards of other federally mandated bargaining. Unionized workers, under current Federal law, have the right to information about their union's finances, and those unions must publicly report on their finances every year. This bill would force unions on States, cities, and towns but would not require union financial transparency or require that workers have access to this financial data.

Fifth, this is the gift that keeps on giving. Not only is there no requirement about union financial reporting and disclosure in this bill, this bill also fails to contain any guarantees to the workers about how their union dues money can be spent. For example, workers unionized under current Federal law cannot be required to contribute to a union's favorite political causes. This bill, which forces collective bargaining on States, cities, and towns that have rejected it contains no such guarantee.

Sixth, this bill would not only fail to provide any meaningful guarantee against the disruption of municipal services because of labor disputes, it practically guarantees the right of unions to cause those disruptions. The bill purports to have no strike guarantee. However, it goes to great pains to say it is not a strike when a public safety officer refuses ``to carry out services that are not mandatory conditions'' of their employment.

What does that mean? Who decides which duties of a firefighter or police officer or public safety officer--that is a pretty broad title-- are ``mandatory''? This provision appears to be nothing more than legislative code words specifically authorizing ``work to rule'' and a host of other types of disruptive job actions that have become all too familiar among public school teacher unions. This bill forces unions on unwilling cities and towns, and then gives those unions a legislative green light to disrupt municipal services.

Finally, there is the enormous problem in this legislation that relates to volunteer firefighters. It is no secret that the International Association of Firefighters, the principal firefighter union in this country, actively opposes the use of voluntary fire departments. It has consistently sought to prevent its members from volunteering their services. Its own union constitution provides for the discipline, fining, or discharge of members who do. The most effective way this union has to prohibit volunteering or, as they refer to it, ``two-hatting,'' is the union contract clause to that effect. They have sought and obtained this kind of clause in union contracts across the country and want to make sure they can continue to do so under H.R. 980.

Now, there is a clause in there that may be referred to. If you look at it, it is ``weasel'' words. It does not do what it is purported to do, and it will eliminate volunteer fire departments.

Members are being told this problem with the bill has been ``fixed.'' That is wrong. It is not. If you really wanted to make sure unions had no authority to kill off volunteer firefighting, you could write a plain provision that does exactly that. Instead, both the House and Senate versions use convoluted, double negative, lawyer speak in a deceptive effort to claim that the problem is solved. I guarantee you that it is not. Once you unwind the language, you will find both the House and Senate versions of the bill leave the door wide open to an all-out union assault on the use of volunteer firefighters.

In 25 States, volunteer firefighters account for all or most of the staffing in more than 90 percent of the departments statewide. In 14 States, volunteers account for all or most of the staffing in more than 80 percent of the departments. With just two exceptions, in the remaining 11 States, volunteers account for all or most of the staffing in more than 60 percent of the departments. No State can provide fire protection in its cities, towns, and rural districts without volunteer firefighters. Anyone who even considers advancing this legislation ought to be completely sure that it could not have a negative effect in their State.

These problems represent only the tip of the iceberg. This bill is quite simply a prime example of terrible policy being badly executed, without process.

Mr. President, I want to bring up another point regarding this legislation that is also of critical importance. This bill imposes an enormous unfunded Federal mandate on States, cities, and towns across the country. I want to take a minute and address this serious concern not only from my current position as a Senator but from my former position as mayor of Gillette, WY, a city of about 22,000 people.

As I look around the Chamber, not many here have had any experience with trying to balance the budget of a city or town. So I guess we should understand why they would pay so little attention to the very real financial consequences of their actions on thousands of municipalities. They ought to.

Just last week, after teetering on the brink of insolvency, the city of Vallejo, CA, finally declared bankruptcy. Everyone has acknowledged that the cause of Vallejo's financial problems was plain and simple: The spiraling costs of their police and firefighter labor agreements.

Vallejo is not alone. In the last few years, a number of other cities and towns have teetered on the brink or actually have been forced into bankruptcy: McCall, ID; Toledo, OH; Marion, MS; Moffet, OK; Duluth, MN--just to name a few.

Now, what we usually don't realize in this body is those bodies don't get to print their own money. They actually have to work with the revenue that comes in. Most of them have severe limitations on the ability to raise money. They could not raise taxes if they wanted to. So the revenue is limited, but the costs go up. What do you do?

Here is the reality. Without regard to pay or benefits, just the administrative costs alone of collective bargaining represent a very significant line item

that Congress now proposes to force on States, cities, and towns. Towns, particularly small ones, that currently don't have the resources to negotiate and administer multiple collective bargaining agreements must now hire and pay for these additional services. And this isn't just going to be one; it is multiple.

Towns and cities that do not devote the long hours of municipal time to the complicated process of bargaining and overseeing multiple union contracts and to administering contract provisions and resolving disputes under a collective bargaining system will be required to spend that time. Nobody should be fooled. Those additional manpower and manhour requirements are enormously costly and burdensome. This bill would impose those costs by Federal mandate but would not provide a single penny of Federal money to help offset those costs. Make no mistake, the Congress is proposing to buy organized labor a free lunch and stick America's small towns with the bill.

As a former mayor and as the only accountant in the Senate, I remind my colleagues about the cold realities of municipal finance. If you increase municipal costs, you have only two ways to meet those increased costs: You either increase revenues or decrease services. This bill will unquestionably place many municipalities in that difficult position of choosing between raising State and local taxes, which they probably would not have the capability to do, or decreasing and eliminating local municipal services, which they don't want to do.

Are the Members of this body so completely out of touch with the real needs of their constituents and the real fiscal problems that their cities and towns face every day that they would impose these unnecessary costs and burdens? With stagnant or declining property values and an endless parade of increasingly fixed costs, don't our cities and towns have enough on their plate without the Federal Government imposing yet another cost on them?

This isn't an imaginary problem. Remember Vallejo, CA, and the other cities and towns I mentioned across the country that make it clear that this problem is very real.

For all these reasons, Mr. President, I am opposed to H.R. 980. I urge my colleagues to vote no on this legislation. Hopefully, we will have a chance to make some corrections to this bill--particularly on the flaws that I have pointed out.

I will just recap. It didn't go to committee. It is an unprecedented intrusion by the Federal Government. It directly overturns existing laws in 22 States. It casts doubt on a dozen more. Sixteen States have recently considered and rejected legislation very much like this. It calls into question the constitutionality. We had no hearing or markup. It creates unfunded mandates. It would impose costs on small towns.

I don't know how many of you think 5,000 is a big city. Actually, in Wyoming it is; 3,500 is considered a first-class city. But 5,000 is not a very big town, and there isn't as much expertise.

I mention that another piece of the bill says the requirement is imposed when there are 25 employees. It doesn't say 25 public safety employees. It doesn't say 25 people who would be covered by this. It says a flat 25. I suspect there are a lot smaller towns than 5,000 that have 25 employees. That is a pretty small amount. That is not the same as public safety employees. So they either have to cut services or raise taxes or the city is going into bankruptcy.

The bill doesn't contain any worker protection for them getting to vote on whether they will have a union, and it puts in charge a little known Federal agency. Again, it is pretty hypocritical of us. We have not imposed this on the Federal Government, but we are willing to impose it on the little places back home. I think we will regret it, and it will remind us of the mistake we made here.

I yield the floor.

Mr. President, I ask unanimous consent that the order for the quorum call be rescinded.

Mr. President, I wish to take a little bit of time to talk about at least two of the amendments and probably make a mention of the one we just had. As to the underlying bill, we have two amendments that have been suggested--one for a public employees bill of rights and the other one for an unfunded mandate exemption--and I want to comment on those a little bit. I haven't gotten to speak much, and there are several on the other side who have spoken to some extent.

I did notice that the Senator from New Jersey, the former mayor of a community of 60,000, made some comments about how this bill would work, and I wished to point out that 60,000 is a pretty big city in a lot of States around this country. That would be bigger than any city in Wyoming. So when we are talking about how easy it is to do these negotiations, I think we are leaving out some crucial factors.

The bill says it applies if a municipality has more than 5,000 people or--this is very important. It says 5,000 people or 25 employees. If it has 25 employees, no matter what they do for the city, the city comes under this bill. It becomes an unfunded mandate for the city even if there are less than 5,000 people. I can tell my colleagues there are a lot of towns that have less than 5,000 that would have, depending on what services they provide, more than 25 employees.

I think that some of these other employees are going to be a little upset, too, realizing that we have this opportunity to place some special emphasis--and should--on the public safety employees, but not others. My city had its own electrical utility, and I can tell my colleagues, if the power goes out, the most important person in the city for public safety is the guy who comes and gets the electricity going again. This bill would not cover those people. If your city sewer is backing up into somebody's home, the most important city employee from a public safety standpoint is the guy with the city utility. This doesn't include him. But it will force some mandates on the city that will take away money from the guy who fixes the sewer backing up into your house or fixes the electrical utility that keeps the power on that handles heat and air-conditioning and other important things for your home.

I also was kind of fascinated by the Senator from Massachusetts, Mr. Kennedy, mentioning that as far as the secret ballot, they are going to leave that up to the States. Why would we leave that up to the States? We are not leaving any of the rest of this up to the States. Not only that, we are saying that no matter what the city and the employees agree to, there is going to be this little-known Federal agency that can say: Nope, not enough. That is the way the bill reads. It allows overriding of agreements by the director of a Federal agency. So we are not only saying: We don't care what kind of relationship you have with your public safety people, we don't care how unfunded this is, and we don't care if it steals money from other city employees, we have a Federal agency that is going to keep its eye on you and let you know if you are doing it well enough. Not to mention, of course, that the rules haven't even been written on this, so we don't even know how those are going to go.

So there are some difficulties, and I want to have the chance to address some of these amendments a little more fully.

Of the people who voted for the motion to proceed--some voted that way to say we should debate this. I mentioned in my speech that we needed to have some time to talk about the difficulties of this bill, that there are a lot of things that people don't realize about this bill that need to be corrected and brought out, and we are doing that through some logical amendments.

But Washington does not know best how a municipality works. There is no way we can understand the diversity of all of the municipalities in this United States that would qualify under this bill. Remember, it applies to those with a population of 5,000 or more or 25 employees. So we are not even sure whom we are pulling into this. But we do know we are affecting State law in all 50 States. The exception, of course, is the question of card check or secret ballot where the bill says if they already require it, it is OK, but if they don't, that is OK too. So we can impose every rule on them we can possibly think of, but we are going to leave the right to a secret ballot part out. I hope that is not the case.

I hope some of the amendments that are being suggested will be voted on and passed or, even better yet, accepted. I think some of them are worthy of that.

So with that, I yield the floor and reserve the right to speak again.

Mr. President, I thank the Senator from Maine for her statement. I have one request for her though. Look at the paragraph that deals with volunteer firefighters--the language regarding allowing professional firefighters who want to help out in the community to volunteer as well. There has been language suggested that would make it clear that what you described would happen. But the language from the House definitely doesn't say that. The language, as revised in the substitute amendment, still doesn't say that. I would appreciate it if the Senator would take another look at that and see if that can be made a lot clearer. The language I was referring to is ``to prohibit an employee from engaging in volunteer or part-time employment, any agreement that contains such language shall be unenforceable.'' That is pretty clear. I am concerned that will not only be misconstrued, but it will be bargained away without any consequence. I would appreciate if the Senator would take another look at that.

Mr. President, as the Senator from Tennessee prepares, I wish to make a couple of comments because I still haven't gotten to talk about either the bill of rights or the unfunded mandate amendments. I am equally as disturbed as the Senator from Massachusetts has just described himself. Where he thinks that I don't understand it, I don't think he understands it. But we have never had a chance to work this out as part of the committee. We come here to the floor, and here it is, kind of take it or leave it. Any amendment that we bring up is going to be considered to have been old and regurgitated. These are things we have always had a concern for, especially when something is being thrust on States that have specifically addressed the particular issue and said no.

I know the Senator from Ohio had a lot of enthusiasm, but I don't think we can connect collective bargaining with the Clean Air Act and the Clean Water Act. Both sides are using some things that might be a little extraneous to what we are trying to achieve here. I do want everyone to pay particular attention to what is in the bill about the final and unprecedented authority of the Federal Labor Relations Authority. As the Senator from Massachusetts says, there are only four requirements. Those are very vague requirements. There are many people who work with this on a daily basis who have noted the vagueness of these terms and how impossible it would be to deal under that criteria. Not to mention the fact that some of these States have not been subject to such ruled before, and after they make agreements, a Federal agency may say: No, that is not good enough.

That is what we are mandating in this bill, asking a Federal agency that we hardly ever hear about, the Federal Labor Relations Authority, to decide, even if a city and their first responders, police, and firefighters say this is a contract we like, that group can override it. They can say: That is not good enough. I don't think that is the kind of Federal authority we should be trying to give to an agency that hasn't had that kind of authority.

I do have more to say, but the Senator from Tennessee is here. I would love to hear his comments.

I yield the floor.

Mr. President, again, I appreciate the words of the Senator from Massachusetts and do enjoy working with him on bills. I think I have been pretty cooperative in getting bills through committee, as he was when I was the chairman.

Again, we have not had a chance to work on these amendments or on the bill together. We are having to do it separately, and there is a lot of rhetoric involved in this issue, and a lot of misunderstanding. Those are the kinds of things that get cleared up in a little closer working relationship than you can get by addressing it on the floor of the Senate.

But I too was a mayor, and I was a mayor of a boomtown. Boomtowns attract young people, and young people are vivacious. They are busy. They like to work hard, and they like to play hard. As a result, I had a police department that had to handle some probably unique situations.

I had a volunteer fire department to work with, and we later combined that with the county so we did not have disputes over whether a building that was on fire was inside the city or outside the city. That helped overcome a lot of difficulties there.

So I worked with the firefighters. I have worked with police. I worked with the sheriff's department. Again, we had that same boundary problem when it came to: What is within the city limits and outside the city limits, particularly when you have a fast-growing community; and we did. And we do again. The energy boom is creating a fast-growing community again.

I remember being at a crawfish boil almost a month ago. That is one of the highlights of the year for people who work particularly in the oil patch, but actually people who work all over the community. It was started by some Cajuns from Louisiana who came up to work in the oil patch. They said: We ought to have a crawfish boil. They even figured out a reason for it. They said: If we can get somebody to donate the food, and then we can charge people to come, we can put that in kind of an emergency fund for anything that happens to anybody. They did that. The event still goes on 25 years later. They used to give the beer away. Now they sell the beer. That is worth about another $45,000 in donations. But they did about 11,000 pounds of crawfish this year and fed about 5,000 people. At any one time, there were easily 3,500 people in the building. As you came in, you

had to be approved as being over 21 in order to be able to buy that beer. If you were over 21, you got this bright orange wristband, virtually impossible to take off without cutting.

As I was enjoying my crawfish, I looked around the room and noticed that almost everybody there had on one of these orange bands. But I also noticed that they all looked like they were about 18 or 19. I knew they were 21.

So, once again, we have a very young community of people who are working hard and playing hard. That puts some extra stress on law enforcement. I respect the people who are in law enforcement. In fact, my brother-in-law is a policeman in Gillette. He is the oldest person to ever go through the Wyoming law enforcement academy. He decided to become a policeman at the time most policemen are retiring, and he loves it. He enjoys it, and he does a good job with it. He has seen some interesting situations and even been bitten by a person. But he loves his work. He does it well. But he has not asked me to mandate collective bargaining. Neither did the people who worked for me when I was mayor.

I would not have had the capability to do any particular additional things for them because while it was a boom, it was an energy boom, and all the energy happened outside of the community. So we did not get any tax base off of that business--the business that was growing and causing the city growth. We only got to tax what was inside the city limits. We had to handle things such as sewer and water, streets, garbage, police protection, and electricity. We even had our own electrical utility.

I had to find water for people. They considered that to be the biggest need. The only place we could get enough water to take care of the population--we were already on water rationing when I took office-- was to go 42 miles away. The cost of that project--the interest alone on the cost of that project exceeded all the revenue for the city of Gillette. It did not leave me a lot of negotiating capability with anybody. It tied my hands significantly.

I had to come to New York City and prove that we would be able to pay off the water bonds. I had to go to New York to go to the rating agencies so we could get a good enough rating that I could get revenue so we could afford the whole thing. The ironic part of it was, it was when New York City was going broke. New York City was going broke. Mayor Lindsay was having a few problems with the city. The questions I got were very difficult to handle for a small town in Wyoming because they were basing them on a big city in New York. They wanted to know if we were going to run into the same problems New York City had.

Well, the big problem that New York City had was that they bargained early retirement for firefighters and police, so they only had to work 20 years until they could get their retirements. So they worked for 20 years. They were only 40 years old. They had two people retired for every one person who was working. It is hard to provide police protection if you have twice as many people retired as you have working, and you have to pay all of these people who are not working their retirement. It created a huge problem for New York. They did not need us to say: You have to have collective bargaining, because they already had collective bargaining. So we did not have collective bargaining. I was able to explain why our policemen would work a little bit longer and be a productive part of the police force longer than in New York City. I got the rating I needed on the bonds and was able to build the water project. It has been a good source--and still is a good source--of water. But now the town has had another one of those booms where they probably doubled or maybe tripled in size. That will require a lot more water. Water is a basic need for communities. So I do not feel comfortable imposing on them any kind of requirements of how they are supposed to do their business. They are right there where the people are. They are in the best position to know what the community needs and wants the most.

When I was mayor, I used to talk about the ``oh, by the ways.'' That is when you are walking down the street or you are out to dinner, even with your family, and people come up and say: Oh, by the way, I have this little problem. Don't get up and solve it right now. Tomorrow will be fine. But they do intend for you to solve that problem by tomorrow.

Now, the whole discussion today has made it sound as though municipalities are enemies of public service and public safety employees. I do not know of any communities where that is true. To make it sound as though the whole country works against the policeman, against the fireman, against the first responders because there is not a collective bargaining law, is wrong. There is an old expression: You can't fight city hall. My opinion of that is, if you can't, you never tried it. Because the people at city hall are responsive. The mayors and the council keep their job if they take care of the problems the people have. If they do not, they are out of there--probably not just one at a time, but en masse. They do not try to pick out exactly who made the bad decisions; they just get rid of them. So towns have to be responsive to all of their employees.

As I said before, I think there are probably a lot of employees out there who say: How come I am not important? How come just the firefighters, just the police, just the first responders are important? I am important too, and this leaves me out.

So we are trying to make some points while a big public relations event is going on here this week. I finally figured out that is why this bill has been brought up at this time, even though it has not gone through committee or had any hearings in the Senate. On bills that came before this committee before, we tried to avoid the heat of the moment because I have found in legislating, if it is worth reacting to, it is worth overreacting to. I think what we have here is a little bit of an overreaction, and there is not going to be much chance to make any changes in it.

I have been kind of keeping track of time here. I know we had about the same number of speakers, but we certainly did not have the same amount of time to speak. I also know the leader also already sent out the word there were not going to be any more votes today. Well, since we have not gotten to address this bill before with the rest of the body, I have asked all of them to pay attention to the amendments we are doing. But I would hesitate to offer any more amendments when I know everybody has gone home. They are all out to dinner by now.

I do not think this is the way we should try to do business. I do not think it was intentional. But I think it certainly puts us at a disadvantage when we are trying to bring up some things that point out some difficulties with this particular bill--offering some responsible amendments, regardless of how they are portrayed.

So with that, I yield the floor and suggest the absence of a quorum.

Madam President, I recently returned from a trip around Wyoming. The focus of my trip was the need for change in our health care system. I have spoken about that issue on the floor of the Senate on a number of occasions, and while improving our Nation's health care system is essential, here today to speak on another issue of great importance to my constituents. That issue relates to our Nation's energy security. We have debated measures to tax one type of energy to provide tax incentives for other industries. We have debated, without success, the idea of opening up more of America to energy production and the Senate will eventually take up legislation related to climate change.

As we have had those debates, we have seen gas prices rise to record levels. We have passed a ``renewable fuels mandate'' that looks less encouraging with every new study that is released, and we have sent more and more money to countries that do not support our ideals of freedom and democracy.

Because of that, it is my intention here today to inject a little reality, a little common sense into the energy debate. I want us to take a realistic look at how we get there from here. The ``there'' is an America that produces more clean, renewable energy than we can possibly consume. The ``here'' and now is an America that is largely dependent on foreign governments for the energy we need, the energy we can't do without--the energy that is the lifeblood of our economy; the energy that makes our way of life possible. Where we find ourselves now is the hole that the failed planning of the past and realistic ideology has put us in. We have got to get out. We have got to get out for the sake of our children and for the sake of Americans who are struggling to pay their bills today.

For the most part, we can all agree on where we want to go. We want more clean energy. We want to import less foreign oil. We want improved energy efficiency. We can also agree that where we are is not acceptable. Its the road we travel, the pathway we take to a better future that we have been arguing about for decades. The arguments I have seen over the past dozen years or more center not on economic health of our Nation but on environmental health. OK. That is fine with me. We can talk about hydrogen fuel cells, solar panels and wind turbines and we should. All these energy sources and many other renewables are going to be a part of the solution, but overnight, they cannot replace the fuel sources we use today. The technology is not there. The infrastructure is not there, and the will of the American people to switch to different, more expensive fuel sources is not there. It is one thing to say, yes, let's go green, but it's another thing to pull the green out of your wallet to pay for it. Technology takes time to commercialize. Infrastructure takes time to build and the attitudes and willingness of many Americans to embrace a new energy market, a market that could be more expensive, will take time to occur.

What do we do until we get there? What do we do with the energy sources we have now? We make them better. We use them more efficiently. We make them clean. We make them green. And what is America's most readily accessible energy source that we already have the infrastructure in place to use? What is the 800-pound gorilla in the room that unfortunately so many of our political leaders are ignoring or worse yet, persecuting? It's coal.

When you turn on your computer, when you flick that light switch or turn on the television, it's probably powered by coal. Most of the energy we use to recycle the aluminum cans you put in the special bin on the curb, the glass, the metal, the plastic, well it comes from coal. And if you had an electric car now and wanted to plug it in to recharge, that energy would likely come from coal. Coal supplies more than 50 percent of our Nation's electricity and we have enough of it to last us for more than 225 maybe 500 years. Coal is what is going to pave the way to a completely renewable energy future. But its not going to be the coal you are picturing in your head right now. It's not going to be the black lump that Santa gives to ill-behaved kids on his list. It's not the dirty, dusty coal of Dickens' Victorian London. No, what I am talking about is plentiful clean coal that we use our ingenuity and our resources to turn into green coal.

You are worried about climate change and support the use of clean- burning natural gas. Good. Then you should support the projects underway right now that will convert coal into that natural gas or carbon sequestration of 50 percent of the carbon from coal, which makes coal just as ``clean'' as natural gas. We are developing technology to efficiently and cost-effectively convert coal into low carbon, low sulfur diesel, and to convert coal into low carbon gasoline so we can cancel those trips to Saudi Arabia where we have our hands out begging them to increase production of oil. Look, tomorrow we are not going to be able to jump into our hover car that is powered by common household trash. We need to develop what we have right now alongside the fuels of the future. Instead of running from coal, we should invest in its abundance, in its power and its potential. Instead of running from coal, America needs to run on coal, green coal.

George Washington Carver is one of my heroes for what he did with the peanut. He found over 300 ways that American farmers could use the peanut, including as soap, facial cream, shampoo and even ink. What we need now is a George Washington Carver of coal--and I believe several are out there right now ready to invent. They just need a little bit more encouragement instead of the ``can't do'' attitude that I hear from some opponents of coal.

Over the next few months, as we debate energy issues in the Senate, I will be talking with my colleagues about the need to develop the energy sources we will use in the future, some of which must be cleaner, more efficient versions of the energy sources we use today. We need all the energy we can get to power America, and I look forward to working on that solution.

I have been paying attention to what China is doing. They have figured out that the future power of the world is in energy, and they are buying it up anywhere they can. They are even buying U.S. coal.

But I wish to speak today in a little more detail on an issue that is affecting everyone in the Nation, and that issue is the rising price of gasoline and diesel fuel. The rising prices are disproportionately affecting my constituents in Wyoming, who are oftentimes forced to drive long distances to get to and from work, and then all over the country I am hearing from truckers, usually small company truckers who have a fixed contract to deliver a product and no fuel escalation clause. I expect, from a financial literacy situation, that they have learned something about that, but they are still tied into those and they are going broke doing what they agreed to do because of the cost of fuel. They are visiting with all of us.

The Senate needs to take up action, and there is an amendment before us that will help all Americans.

With Americans hurting, we need to do something--anything to reduce gasoline prices. But, instead of working on solutions for one of the single most important issues confronting the American people, the majority sticks its fingers in its ears and loudly sings campaign rhetoric chorus and verse. Last week, as oil shot up above $115 per barrel, we held one vote. We did not vote on Tuesday, Wednesday, Thursday or Friday. This week, we were out of session on Monday. This is not the way we should legislate when Americans cannot afford to fill up their tanks. We need to do something about energy and we need to do it now.

I am proud to be a cosponsor of the Domestic Energy Production Act of 2008 that was recently introduced by Senator Domenici. The legislation includes a number of important provisions that will have a positive effect on our Nation's energy situation. Some provisions are designed to help hard working consumers today. Other provisions have a long term impact that will make it so that we are not as dependent on oil barons in the Middle East and foreign dictators to get our energy.

There are a number of good provisions in this bill that will make a difference. The bill allows for the development of domestic energy sources that are currently off limits. A major reason we are seeing high prices is the lack of domestic energy supplies in the face of growing energy demands. It allows for responsible energy production in the Outer Continental Shelf and for limited, environmentally safe energy production in the Arctic National Wildlife Refuge. Allowing for this production will help us to lessen our imports of energy. What we produce in the United States we do not have to send money to other countries for.

The bill addresses the need to build new refineries. There is not enough refining capacity in the United States to handle the demand that we have. Yet our policies are so onerous that there has not been a new refinery built in the United States in more than 30 years. This needs to change, and the only way it will change is if we act to make the process for permitting a refinery more reasonable.

The bill addresses the need to fairly compensate States that allow for energy production to occur on their lands by repealing a provision to withhold 2 percent of the revenue States receive to pay for ``administrative costs.'' This provision is particularly harmful to Wyoming and must be repealed immediately. The Federal Government's actions toward the Sates regarding mineral royalties are the actions of a bully and a thief. I am standing up to this bully. I hope my colleagues will join me. Your State could be bullied next. Don't forget that.

This bill also addresses our Nation's need to find alternatives to oil by promoting coal to diesel fuel. Coal is our Nation's most abundant energy source and can be made into low sulfur diesel through a process that has been in existence for years. We need to build coal to diesel plants in the United States in order to increase our energy security and this bill has provisions to promote this important and much needed policy.

Any one of provisions I have mentioned will help our Nation's energy situation and we need to act now. If the majority doesn't like every part of it, that is fine. Let's get in there and pass the parts we can agree on. Let's change the parts we can't agree on. Let's throw some of the parts out. I was working on an 80 percent rule, figuring we can usually agree on 80 percent of anything and if we concentrate on the 80 percent, we can get it done and leave the other 20 percent to the pundits. But we need to get out there and pass the parts we agree on. We need to get something done.

There will be plenty of credit to go around. Congress cannot sit back and do nothing as American pocketbooks are bleeding. Right now, the credit for that has to go to the majority.

I hope all my colleagues join me in supporting the Domestic Energy Production Act of 2008, even though we do not get to vote on it tomorrow and we don't get to vote on it Monday. We are not going to get to vote on it until Tuesday. But we ought to be making some difference by Tuesday.

Like I say, we can revise it, we can change it, we can throw parts out, but we have got to do something. America is complaining about the price of gas. I understand that. I look forward to seeing everyone next week to make a difference for America.

I yield the floor.

Mr. President, I rise to speak about the importance of the Ensuring Continued Access to Student Loans Act of 2008. In a time when there is great concern about turmoil in our credit markets, the action we are taking today addresses an important segment of those markets. What began as a problem within the mortgage market has threatened to disrupt the market that students and their parents rely on to obtain student loans. This bill is a necessary step to providing students access to the loans they need for college this fall.

While not perfect, this bill will go a long way toward restoring the confidence needed for the student loan market to work. And this is being accomplished at no cost to the Government.

The Secretary of Education can now take actions that will increase loan limits for students and provide parents with greater access to federally guaranteed loans. Both provisions will decrease reliance on private loans which cost more and are becoming less available.

This bill demonstrates our commitment to maintaining the availability of loans through the Federal Family Education Loan, FFEL, program as well as the Federal Direct Loan program. Currently FFEL serves 80 percent of postsecondary students who take out student loans, while the Federal Direct Loan program serves 20 percent. Both loan programs must remain strong.

With the passage of this bill, we create the means to stabilize the college loan market in the coming months. However, I realize that this is a short-term solution. We must preserve the long-term viability of the FFEL program for the students and parents who rely on it to achieve their educational goals.

Additionally, in this bill we have increased grant support for Pell- eligible students who take rigorous high school courses and major in science, technology, engineering, math and critical foreign languages. At a time when our economy needs more individuals with knowledge and skills in these areas, this bill provides low-income college students with the means to be successful in these high-need, high-reward fields.

I appreciate the opportunity to work with Senator Kennedy on this bill to help students. However, the job is not yet done. We need to finish our work on the comprehensive reauthorization of the Higher Education Act as a lot has changed since it was reauthorized 10 years ago. It is a much more competitive world today. We need a stronger, more relevant system of higher education in this country to compete and win in the global economy.

Last July we passed the Senate bill by a vote of 95-0. We are now working with the House to get an agreement to the President before Memorial Day. I look forward to continuing to work with Senator Kennedy to get the best bill possible for students and their families.

As we finish our work on the reauthorization of the Higher Education Act, we will continue to monitor the bill we passed today and its impact on the availability of student loans to ensure that it accomplishes what we intended. Our students are our future and we have to make sure that we provide them with every opportunity to be successful.

Mr. President, I ask unanimous consent that the order for the quorum call be rescinded.

Mr. President, I ask unanimous consent that I be allowed such time under morning business as I might consume.

Mr. President, I just got back from Wyoming. I am in Wyoming almost every weekend. I travel to a different part of the State each time so I can see all the people. As a result, I do not do any polls. If you talk to more people in a weekend than pollsters cover when they do something, you can get a pretty good feel for what is happening.

I did run across a national poll, and the poll said the No. 1 concern on the minds of people in America was jobs and the economy. They said the No. 2 concern was health care. There is an interesting little anomaly in No. 1 and No. 2, which is when you talk to people about No. 1, jobs and the economy, one of the reasons they are concerned about jobs and the economy is because they don't want to lose their health insurance. If their job disappears, they are out there in the market and they don't have the coverage.

So I am going to talk about health care today. I have been talking to a lot of folks about health care, which isn't difficult because it is on everyone's mind these days. During the last work period--and we sometimes call it a recess, but I prefer to call it a work period because I usually travel from 1,000 to 5,000 miles around my State during that time--I went on a 10-stop tour of Wyoming. In just over 3 days, we drove over 1,200 miles and visited 10 towns and I met with lots of Wyomingites. I even spoke to people at several stops who live outside those 10 communities but drove miles and miles to come to our meeting. Wyoming does have miles and miles of miles and miles--about 400 miles on a side--and it is a long way between towns.

The dedication and passion of the people who live in the towns and the people who drove all those miles strengthens my commitment to getting something more done about health care. We need to do something. A lot of people feel more economically secure when they have health insurance. They know that if they have health insurance and something happens or they get sick, they will be able to get the care they need without mortgaging their home or going bankrupt. That is another concern on their mind. Nobody should have to worry about that. Everybody should be able to carry a health insurance card in their wallet.

The news isn't all bad, however. There have been plenty of wonderful things that have come from our health care system in recent years. Each year, new technologies are being invented and new drugs are being created that allow people to live longer and healthier lives. Researchers are finding cures for diseases, and parents are able to take care of sick children. They are able to take them to clinics in shopping centers and pharmacies to get throat cultures and flu shots. Plenty of good things are happening, but we can do better.

Now, during my Wyoming work periods, my wife Diana and I travel around and talk to folks about health care. I listen to what they tell me about the problems they are having and I bring that information back and I compare it to what my colleagues are saying. One of the things I do is to teach the East about the West. So when I am in DC, I usually have to explain to folks how Wyoming is different, how a plan designed around New York or Massachusetts would not work for Wyoming. I have to tell them it can be hard to get doctors and nurses to come to Wyoming. The smaller the town, the harder it is to attract good people. I remind the people in the East that we have a lot of people who work at the mines and in the oil patch and in the natural gasfields. They work hard for their hourly wages doing difficult and dangerous tasks. The type of health care they need is different than the type someone working at a computer needs. How do we help the construction worker and the computer technician both get better health care that fits their unique needs at a more reasonable price?

My position on the Senate Health Committee has allowed me to do a lot of research on this subject. I have talked to patients, health care providers, scientists, and financial advisers. You name it and we came up with a plan that I think is flexible enough to work for everybody.

The bill I have put together is called Ten Steps to Transform Health Care in America. The bill would get everyone an insurance card to carry in their wallets and purses. If you already have an insurance card, the bill will make sure you get to keep the card by wrangling in health care costs until they are affordable. The biggest danger people who have an insurance card have is costs are going to become so astronomical that it would not be offered anymore. We have to see that doesn't happen.

Why 10 steps? Well, I have discovered, over the course of the years I have been in the Senate, that if you put together one massive, comprehensive bill that solves everything, you will get a lot of discussion, but you would not get many results because one piece will have 5 people who don't like it, another piece will have 8 people who don't like it, and another piece will have 11 people who don't like it, and another piece will have 3 people who don't like it, and pretty quickly you are at 51 votes against you and you cannot get the bill done. When you try to do something comprehensively, it often looks revolutionary. We don't do things ``revolutionarily'' in the Senate. We do them ``evolutionarily.'' So I put together 10 pieces. If we don't get all 10, or even if we only get one, it is not a problem because any 1 step gets us closer to having every American insured. All 10 together would get every American insured. I will briefly walk you through all 10 steps.

In order to understand how the bill works, it is important to review a few facts of the history of health care insurance in our country. Right now, about 60 percent of the people under age 65 are getting their health insurance through their jobs. The question is, why are 60 percent of Americans getting their health insurance through their jobs? The short answer to that question is because of the way employer- sponsored health care insurance is treated for tax purposes.

Our current health insurance system is biased toward employer-based coverage due to a historical accident. The wage controls of World War II increased competition among employers for recruiting the best employees and incentivized employers to offer health benefits instead of increased wages. They weren't allowed to offer increased wages. In 1954, Congress codified the provision declaring that such a contribution would not count as taxable income. This tax policy made it very favorable for individuals to get their health benefits through their employers and, consequently, has penalized individuals who get their coverage through the individual market.

The Joint Committee on Taxation estimated that removing this tax bias and a few related health care tax policies will save the Federal Government $3.6 trillion over the next 10 years. That is real money-- even in Washington. That is a lot of money that can and should be used to expand choices and access and give individuals more control over their health care. Ten Steps ensures every American can benefit from these savings--whether they get health care from their employers, from the individual insurance market, or they decide they want to get off Medicaid and switch to private insurance. That is one of the options.

How does this bill do it? The plan gives all Americans that have at least a certain amount of health insurance a standard tax deduction. The national above-the-line standard tax deduction for health insurance will equal $15,000 a year for a family and $7,500 for an individual. The bill also gives low-income folks a tax credit equal to $5,000 for a family and $2,500 for an individual. The subsidy amount phases out as incomes get higher, so some folks would not be eligible for the subsidy, but everyone is eligible for the standard deduction I mentioned first.

The bill takes this hybrid approach of coupling the standard deduction proposal with the tax credit proposal because I think it is the best way to ensure no particular group of people is adversely affected. I know some folks are advocating for just a standard deduction, and other folks are advocating for a tax credit. My plan does both, but I am supportive of all approaches. I am pleased so many colleagues agree we need to fix the flawed Tax Code. The bottom line is we need to get something done. Correcting the flawed Tax Code will make it easier for working Americans to buy health insurance. Jobs don't need insurance; people do.

One of the things this tax policy would do is encourage more companies in the insurance business to provide more options to the people. The options would vary in price, bringing prices down through more competition. We talked about Medicare Part D and got that instituted in the United States for the cost of pharmaceuticals to seniors to go down. I was concerned about how that would work. Wyoming has a low population. I think it will be about half a million in the next census. I wasn't sure we would be able to attract competition to our State. There is a little provision in Medicare that says if there isn't any plan interested in bidding, the Federal Government will provide a plan. In Wyoming, we had 49 companies bidding for each person's pharmaceutical work. It gave a lot of options and, more importantly, it brought the price down about 20 percent before we ever got started. That is what competition does. We also need to make sure the insurance is portable; that when one person changes jobs, they can be sure they still have their insurance. Some people are locked into jobs because they, or a family member, have a preexisting condition that will preclude them from getting insurance if they change.

The fourth step gives small businesses greater purchasing power to reduce the cost of insurance plans. Right now, a lot of rules are in place that prohibit groups of businesses from getting together and pooling their purchasing power across State lines--in fact, across the whole United States--so they can negotiate better deals on insurance cards. That doesn't make sense. If a group of shoe stores in Wyoming wants to get together with other shoe store owners in Montana and Colorado and the rest of the United States and band together to get a greater discount on health insurance, they should be allowed to do so. This isn't a brand new concept. Some States have enough population that they are able to do this anyway within their State borders. Ohio is a great example. They have been intensely interested in this piece of legislation. They have put together the small business health plan within their State, and it has saved a tremendous amount of money. They were inventive enough to do it in the first place and smart enough to know if they can expand across State borders and across the United States, they can reduce those prices a lot more. We should not be keeping them from doing that.

I mentioned earlier that jobs don't need health insurance, people do. Right now, when a small business wants to get health insurance for employees, they contact the health insurance agent and tell the agent how many are employed and they give information about the employees and then the agent quotes a price for offering health insurance to those employees.

Right now, there are some Federal rules in place that govern that process for small groups of employees and make sure the groups are fairly treated by insurance companies. The protections provide assurances to consumers that insurers will deal with preexisting conditions fairly and provide coverage--even to small groups. This has helped keep costs down for small businesses, but more needs to be done, especially given that none of these rules apply to individuals who purchase health insurance on their own. At a minimum, we need to make sure individuals get treated the same way groups get treated.

The fifth step blends the individual and group market to extend important HIPAA portability protections to the individual market so insurance security can better move with them from job to job.

The sixth step is possibly the most critical and one we must take to reduce medical costs across the board. This step moves our system from one that provides sick care to one that provides health care. That is an important distinction. As Ben Franklin said: ``An ounce of prevention is worth a pound of cure.'' We need an innovative system that will do more to help Americans prevent and manage chronic illness, so they can live healthy lives with fewer medical costs. The Ten Steps plan would do that.

The seventh step gives individuals the choice to convert the value of their

Medicaid and SCHIP program benefits into private health insurance, putting them in control of their health care, not the Federal Government. The rationale for this step is simple: If the market can provide better coverage at a lower price, then why not allow Americans to access that care?

This gives low-income individuals more options about where they can receive care and what care is available. It is time for people to start making decisions about their care. Let's get the Government out of the doctors' offices.

The eighth step is one that Congress has come close to passing in years past--a bipartisan plan to encourage the adoption of cutting-edge information technologies in health care. The health care industry is the last industry to go digital. Think about what technology has done to revolutionize every other industry and how it has led to a more efficient use of time and resources. The health care industry should not lag behind. The time has come for health information to go digital so we can save thousands of lives and billions of dollars.

Mr. President, did you know that you own your own health care record? I would like to know how many of my colleagues have theirs with them. I am willing to bet none not even me. Try to get your health care record some time. But you ought to have your health care record on a card you carry with you that has everything about you so if you come from Wyoming out to Washington, DC, and you get in a wreck, the doctor who is taking care of you can have all of the information he needs to make sure that while he is taking care of you, he is not hurting you another way. Right now, some of that technology is available in Wyoming, and some of that technology is available here. The difficulty is the card in Wyoming cannot be read here, and the card here cannot be read in Wyoming. Of course, we hope people will come out to Wyoming for a vacation, and we hope they do not get in an accident. If you are in Yellowstone Park, Grand Teton Park, or other beautiful places in Wyoming, if you get sick, we want the doctor there to have all the information he needs to be sure you are taken care of. That is possible now. We just need a standard of getting that information from one part of the country to another. You can take your ATM card anywhere in the world and get cash, but you cannot take your medical records anywhere.

There is another big problem with medical records. You go to one provider, and he has a test done. He sends you to a specialist. The specialist says it is going to take too long to get the test over here, this is important, and it is an emergency, so they do the test again. Do you know how much the tests cost? Sometimes $3,000, $4,000, $10,000, and they are duplicated. The RAND Corporation said duplication of tests may be costing us as much as $140 billion a year. That is real money. That is real money that could be spent on health care and health IT.

Some are concerned about the impact of health IT and electronic health records on the security of personal data, data security. Let me assure my colleagues that protecting patient information is a very high priority of mine, and nearly every section of this bill demonstrates it.

The health IT bill does a lot to build on protections we already have in place. The bill establishes the American Health Information Community which is made up of experts representing a complete cross section in health care, consumer, and technology communities.

The American Health Information Community is charged with providing the Secretary of Health and Human Services recommendations concerning national policies for adoption by the Federal Government to ensure that patient data remain secure. But there is another important part to this. The companies that are putting together these programs that we assume will have standardization so they can be used in all parts of the country have a real desire and a real need, if their product is going to be lasting, to be sure there is data security. They work on that every day, just as the banks work on your ATM card every day to make sure somebody is not getting your money. It should not be a worry.

The ninth step of the bill is one of the most important steps for frontier areas such as Wyoming. An insurance card in your wallet will not do any good if there is not a doctor or hospital around when you need care. If there are not enough nurses working in that hospital or no one is working at the desk to admit you, a health insurance card will not help you very much.

The 10-step plan addresses this problem by helping future providers and nurses pay for their education and encouraging them to serve in areas of great need. The plan provides competitive matching grants for States to encourage nurses to return to the profession after having left the workforce for 3 years or more.

People are living longer. People can be active longer. We need to encourage more people to stay in the workforce longer. This will do it for nurses and help solve a tremendous problem seniors are going to have.

The plan also boosts the current programs we have that are working well--the Community Health Centers Program and the loan repayment programs for the National Health Service Corps. Those community centers are providing a lot of health care to a lot of people who would not be able to get health care otherwise. We have the reauthorization ready to go on that issue and almost complete.

Another piece that is critical to Wyoming, the 10-step plan builds on the success of the current rural health care programs by ensuring the appropriate development of rural health systems and access to care for rural patients.

One of the things that continues to be very important to me as I work on this 10-step plan is listening to real folks about what they want from their health care. One thing I heard over and over is that seniors want to stay in their homes longer. They do not want to go to nursing homes if they don't have to. Sadly, because of the way our laws are written and the way our reimbursement policies are structured, folks are sometimes left with no option but to go to a nursing home. If the policies were different and there were more options and there were more flexibility, seniors could stay in their homes longer.

My plan works to do just that by putting the emphasis on community and home-based care, which is often much preferred, less costly and proven to increase the quality of life. One way to do this is by supporting programs such as the Greenhouse Project which creates a community setting rather than an institutional setting.

The final step of the 10-step plan decreases the skyrocketing costs of health care by restoring reliability in our medical justice system through State-based solutions. No one--not patients or health care providers--is appropriately served by our current medical litigation procedures.

Right now, many patients who are hurt by negligent actions receive no compensation for their losses. Those who do receive a mere 40 cents of every premium dollar, given the high cost of legal fees and administrative costs. That is simply a waste of medical resources.

Additionally, the likelihood and the outcomes of lawsuits and settlements bear little relation to whether a health care provider was at fault. Consequently, we are not learning from our mistakes. Rather, we are simply diverting our doctors, and they are spending more time in the courtroom. When someone has a medical emergency, they want to see a doctor in an operating room, not in a courtroom.

Those are the 10 steps. As I mentioned before, I worked on 10 steps so we can break the steps into separate bills and move them one at a time in a moveable, reasonable piece. Despite the intentions of Congress, we have to work in incremental doses rather than monumental doses in order to get anything done.

Some of the steps I have mentioned are newer ideas that still need some time to be worked out and will still need some tinkering around the edges, but some of the steps I went over today are ready to go. Health IT could be done any day this week. Those bills are drafted, they are stand-alone bills, and they are ready to move through Congress at any time. We need to do it.

Some people say this is a Presidential election year; what do the candidates think about it? What do they think about it? They are covering that a little bit. I think Senator McCain made a speech earlier today about

health care and some of the things he intends to do with it. I have heard other speeches from other candidates. We do not need to wait for a Presidential election to do something in health care, to do anything in health care. When a person gets elected President, they give us pretty good suggestions, but they no longer get to vote on any of the issues. We have to do the votes. We have to draft the legislation. We have to do the debate. There is no reason to wait until we have a President, no need.

There is a need--a critical need, an understood need--by the people of America that we need to do something on health care and we need to do it right now. It is such an issue of great concern to the American people that it transcends politics as usual.

I never ask when I am in Wyoming whether a person is a Republican or Democrat when they bring me an idea or a problem. I just want to know what the idea is or what the problem is, and I do like it when they provide a solution with it as well. If it is doable, we do it. That is what we need to do on health care.

If we make sure that we transcend politics, if we get away from the polarization of a political year, we will have an opening to get something done that will help patients and doctors.

I am going to suggest we use my 80-percent rule. I came to Washington as a firm believer in the 80-percent rule. That is, we can reach agreement on 80 percent of the issues and we are probably never going to reach agreement on the other 20 percent. By focusing on 80 percent of the issues we can agree on, we can get something done. If we continue to let the 20 percent we disagree on serve as a roadblock, we will let some great opportunities pass. That is something we cannot afford to have happen again and again.

I truly hope this is the year we stop talking about health care and start doing something about it because Americans cannot wait another year. They do not want to wait for an election to see some changes. They certainly do not want to wait another year to stop their health care costs from going up and up. They want to see change, and they want to see change now.

Our small business owners, our working families, our millions of uninsured cannot afford to wait, and we can do it. We can do it now, and we can do it together.

Last week, we passed the genetic nondiscrimination bill. That has the potential to provide health care as opposed to sick care. That has the potential to let people have their blood tested to find out what possibilities there are to what could happen to them based on their genetic information so they can keep that from happening.

What the bill does is make sure that the information you get from that testing cannot be used against you by your insurance company or your employer. That should give you encouragement to find out more about yourself so if there is something that could be a preexisting condition, you can keep it from becoming a preexisting condition and your insurance company cannot make it a preexisting condition until it actually happens.

We have a chance to do a lot of things in health care. We have done something in health care. I hope we will get health IT done in health care this week or next week. There is no reason we cannot. The small business health plans, to let the companies group together over State lines, there is no reason that cannot get done. There are several ideas out there that have been put together well that can be combined to get something done. I hope it goes through the regular process, which means through committee. I also noticed legislation that does not go through a committee around here does not get done, and that is because it has not had that chance to be worked on in a very individual way. When we are in committee and doing a markup and there is a problem three or four people have, they can go off and work on that problem and come up with a solution. Sometimes it is a compromise; sometimes it is leaving something out; sometimes it is a brandnew way. That is where the innovation happens, in committee. Whenever we avoid the committee, what we are saying is: We have this legislation we want to shove down your throat. It will help make each side take some bad votes, and this is an election year, so maybe we should have some bad votes. I don't think that is necessary. I think there are solutions out there, solutions we can reach agreement on, solutions we can finish, and what is more, I think the American people expect it and, more importantly, demand it. We can do it. Let's do it.

I yield the floor.

Mr. President, this is an exciting day. We are going to make a difference in health care for this country--not sick care; health care--and this will unlock a door that will allow people to get the kind of genetic testing where they can tell if something down the road might happen to them and prevent it, or at least weaken the effect of it.

As time goes on, we will find more causes that will relate back to the genome and people will be able to immediately check if that new problem could relate to them and they can solve it before it happens to them. That is health care. That gets us away from sick care.

I finished a tour in Wyoming. I called it the 10 stops for 10 steps of health care. I collected ideas from across this body on ways we could solve health care problems in America. It is 10 steps. They can be done separately. If they are done separately, each step will get us closer to lower costs and better access. If all of them are done, we will have every American insured.

We need to get into prevention, particularly of chronic illnesses, and this bill will do it. Right now, people are afraid to get their blood tested. Sometimes they are forced to have their blood tested. Insurance companies sometimes want a blood test. That blood test will tell far more than it ever did in the history of the world, and that can have some dire consequences, except for this bill. This bill will protect people. This bill, first of all, ensures that if an insurance company takes that test and they find out anything, the person whose blood it was gets to find out everything. A lot of times they learn nothing. That is not fair. This will assure that doesn't happen.

Another thing that happens is sometimes there is a little clause-- usually there is a clause--which says if it is a preexisting condition, the insurance company doesn't have to cover it. Well, this keeps that information of what could possibly happen to you from becoming a preexisting condition until it actually happens. That gives the individual the chance to do something about it first. If it doesn't happen, it isn't a preexisting condition. That is what this bill will do.

Now, another bill we need to be working on, of course, that I cover in my 10 steps, is health information technology. That fits with this genome project. I have asked many times: How many of you have your medical records with you? You know, I have yet to have anybody say they do. With the technology we have in this country, everybody ought to be able to have all their health care and their genome on a card such as this, that they can carry with them everywhere.

If the health IT bill passed, you could be on vacation from Wyoming out here in DC, and if something happened, that card would be readable out here. So a doctor here could know everything he needs to know to fix you as well as possible. That is a step we have to have in health care. We are very close to getting it.

The old privacy issue crops up every once in a while. It isn't a matter of privacy. Your privacy needs to be protected and it is protected. There is always a problem of data security. Right now, records are in hospital files and in doctors' offices, and hundreds of people can come through there. Yes, the records are kind of protected, but people can look at them, and you would never know. If it is in health information technology and somebody gets to look at it, you will know. In order to sell health information technology, companies need to be working on a daily basis to make sure that information is secured. They are out of business if it is not.

So that is not a problem, and that is a bill we need to put through in a process such as this. I think there is near unanimous agreement on both sides of the aisle that needs to be passed, and we ought to have the hour or hour and a half or 2 hours of debate on that and get that one done. Then people truly could have their information on a card they carry with them all the time. They could even add their own comments and the things they learn about themselves on their card.

There is a better reason for passing it than that, though, and that is there are a lot of duplication tests these days. You go to one provider and he says: I have to do that test. It is an expensive test. He says: Because of this test, I need to send you to a specialist, and the specialist says: It is going to take so long to get that record over here, we

are going to do the test over again. Some of these tests are $3,000, $5,000 or $10,000. The RAND Corporation says if we could eliminate the duplication of tests, we could save $140 billion a year. Even in this body, that is real money. We need to do that. That would be another step. It is just as close as this genetic nondiscrimination has been for a long time.

Of course, one of the rules around here is the first 90 percent of a bill takes 90 percent of the time, and the other 10 percent takes 90 percent too. That is where we have been on this. But we have finally bridged the last hurdle. We have gotten understanding among all the people in this body--no small task--so everybody has been speaking favorably on this bill and with good reason. It has been a long time coming.

I should mention that is another thing we kind of do that is a little unusual. We preconferenced with the other side. We have already talked to the people over there who will manage any debate on that side, and this bill is going to pass the House the same way it is passing the Senate. We have already checked with the White House, and it is going to be signed. So I wish to congratulate the chairman of the committee for the way he has been working on this bill. This is the way bills are supposed to be done, in my opinion.

We have worked together on a lot of bills, and the ones that go through committee and we work out these details, wind up going through here in a hurry. We have learned something from being in a hurry. Previously, a lot of bills that have gone through here, we have let them go by unanimous voice vote. We didn't have the benefit of having that opportunity to explain this, consequently we haven't gotten much publicity. If the publicity doesn't go out on it, the people don't know about it. We are not interested in publicity for the publicity, but we are interested in people knowing what this bill does that will help them and that will encourage them to use the genome. That is why we need this.

I congratulate Senator Kennedy for all of his work on this--kind of following the 80-percent rule. He and I are able to agree on 80 percent of everything. Then we pick out one issue and we can usually agree on 80 percent of that and, more importantly, we can get the groups that are interested in that to agree with that same part. If you have groups out there that are opposing something, the bill probably doesn't have a lot of chance of getting through here. We covered quite a range of base between the two of us, and that makes it possible to bring a lot of people along.

I thank Senator Kennedy, Senator Gregg, and Senator Snowe for their efforts to reach a bipartisan agreement on this bill. I particularly thank Senator Coburn for working hard to make this historic bill better. He did some important work, working with the business community, and his knowledge as a doctor, to make it better. I appreciate all of that effort. I appreciate the effort of the Senators, the effort of their staffs.

I especially recognize the efforts of my HELP Committee staff director, Ilyse Schuman. The first job she had when she came to work for me 6 years ago was to work on this bill. I said it often takes 6 years to get an idea through the Senate. I never believed that until I figured out that she has been working on it 6 years. It should not take us that long to get some of these ideas to stick.

I also thank Andrew Patzman, who is my former health insurance staffer, who also played a major role in the development and forward progress of this bill.

I thank Shana Christrup, Keith Flanagan, Brian Hayes, and Kyle Hicks of my staff for their hard work on this bill. In addition, I wish to thank some of Senator Kennedy's staff: Michael Myers, David Bowen, Lauren McGarity, and Portia Wu; also Stephanie Carlton of Senator Coburn's staff, who was absolutely essential; Bill Pewen of Senator Snowe's staff; Meg Hauck of Leader McConnell's staff; Jen Romans of Senator Kyl's staff, and Jay Khosla and David Fisher of Senator Gregg's staff, for their hard work.

We get to come in and take the credit. They work on these for hours, days, even through weekends sometimes.

I also thank Kim Monk, formerly of Senator Gregg's staff, and David Thompson, formerly of Senator Gregg's and my own staff; and lastly special thanks to Bill Baird of the Senate's Office of Legislative Counsel, and Pete Goodloe, formerly of the House Office of Legislative Counsel and now with Chairman Dingell's staff, because their extraordinary legal drafting and problem-solving skills and their years of hard work helped to make this bill possible.

I thank everybody for their work on this.

Mr. President, I yield 5 minutes to the Senator from Kansas.

I also yield back any time.

I thank the Senator from Georgia.

Mr. President, I rise today to voice my strong opposition to both the substance of H.R. 2831, the so-called Ledbetter Fair Pay Act, as well as the process--or more accurately, the lack of process--that has brought this matter to the Senate floor today.

Welcome to ``gotcha politics 2008.'' When we really are intending to pass a bill, particularly with our Health, Education, Labor and Pension Committee, this is not the way we do it. We sit down, we talk about the principle, we list the mechanisms for solving that principle, and we work together to come up with a solution. That is not the case on this one. There has been a lack of any meaningful legislative process regarding this bill.

Earlier in this session, the Supreme Court upheld a Circuit Court decision regarding the limitations period for filing claims under the discrimination statutes I have noted. In my view, this decision was unquestionably correct and completely consistent with the intent of those statutes. However, even for those who might ultimately disagree with that view, there can be no debate Congress's subsequent action was a slapdash response and a transparent attempt to score political points at the expense of responsible legislating.

No sooner was the ink dry on the decision from the Supreme Court, than this legislation was introduced in the House. It was rushed through committee without change and rammed through the House on an essentially party-line vote just 5 days later. The bill was debated under a rule that allowed only 1 hour of debate and no amendments. Does that seem a little familiar? Yesterday, we heard a diatribe on the Senate floor about how Republicans are holding up everything and insisting on these motions to proceed being brought up. Then, after cloture was approved 94 to 0 on a veterans bill, we weren't allowed to vote on it again anytime that day, and we didn't even go into session until 5 o'clock tonight. That was to keep any discussion or any votes from happening and to limit any debate on this issue.

That is not the way the Senate is supposed to operate, but it is the way we are operating on this bill, just as they did in the House--not going through the normal process of making sure that concerns were being solved. That is the only way anything ever makes it through this body. A look at the House vote reveals this was not the result of any groundswell of unanimity in that body. The margin was razor thin. The bill was then sent to the Senate, where by regular order it is supposed to come before the appropriate committee for debate and amendments, but that hasn't happened. This body has consistently and rightfully taken pride in the care and thorough negotiation of its deliberative process.

Now, despite the deceptive name, this legislation doesn't restore anything. Quite to the contrary, it completely destroys a vital provision of title VII of the Civil Rights Act that was intentionally included by the drafters of that legislation. Employment discrimination based on race, sex, age, national origin, religion, or disability is intolerable, and the drafters wanted to ensure any claims of sex discrimination could be promptly addressed.

Beyond this consideration, the drafters of those laws also recognized two practical realities: First, in the employment context, unaddressed claims of discrimination are particularly corrosive. Federal discrimination policy must ensure that bias is rooted out and remedied as quickly as possible. And, second, it is virtually impossible to discover the truth with respect to such claims based on events in the distant past. With the passage of time, memories fade, critical witnesses become unavailable for one reason or another, and records, documents, and other physical evidence are destroyed or otherwise not available. Under this bill, that claim can go until the time of retirement and then be claimed back to the time of whenever this supposed discrimination was, where the witnesses aren't available. But, most importantly, the accounting records aren't available anymore. How can you go back and figure that amount without the records?

It is for these reasons that all statutes granting the right to take legal action contain a limitation period for commencing such actions. These general considerations of discrimination in the workplace led the drafters of title VII to intentionally establish a relatively short period with respect to such claims. They selected a period of 180 days from the discriminatory act, a period that, depending upon the State where the claim arises, could extend to 300 days.

This bill doesn't restore this well-reasoned and plainly intended limitation period and policy; it would eliminate it in virtually all employment discrimination cases. Under this bill, an individual could file a timely charge of discrimination based on an event or act that occurred years, even decades before.

We are told, however, that such a change is necessary because employees may not know they are being discriminated against, or that employers will hide the fact from employees in order to prevent the timely filing of a claim. These appear on their face to be appealing arguments; however, they ignore and they misrepresent the actual state of the law. The law already provides remedies in these instances. The limitations period for filing employment discrimination claims is not nearly as inflexible as the proponents of this bill would lead people to believe.

What about individuals who simply don't know the facts that would lead a reasonable person to conclude they have been discriminated against? Would they be barred from bringing a claim with the Equal Employment Opportunity Commission? If an employee doesn't know the facts, wouldn't their employer just get a free pass on discrimination? The EEOC has addressed this directly. Here is what the EEOC's own compliance manual says:

Sometimes a charging party will be unaware of a possible

EEO claim at the time of the alleged violation. Under such

circumstances, the filing period should be tolled until the

individual has, or should have, enough information to support

a reasonable suspicion of discrimination.

Under the well-recognized doctrine of a continuing violation, all that the law requires is that there be a single act of discrimination within the applicable filing period, and the other context is properly swept into the charge from the reasonable time of knowing it.

Now, this flawed legislation also hides another vast expansion of workplace discrimination laws that must not go unmentioned. Since 1968, the law has been that the individual who is discriminated against is the person with the standing to file a lawsuit. But under this bill, any individual affected by application of a discriminatory compensation decision or other practice has standing to sue. So now it isn't just at retirement or death when the person can bring this up, it is other family members or other dependents who can bring it up, long after the last paycheck.

Practitioners we have consulted agree that this incredibly broad language would easily cover dependents, such as spouses and children benefiting from pension payments and family health care coverage. It could also be construed by courts to extend liability long after pension payments are completed, if the money is invested in an annuity, for example. This is a huge expansion that we have never talked about in committee.

And, before I close, I want to mention my greatest concern in dealing with the legislation. If we were really concerned about helping the greatest number of workers, we wouldn't be focused on changing the law to help improve their chances of a successful lawsuit. Instead, we would be extending a helping hand and providing a source for them to obtain the training they need to keep their current jobs and work toward better ones--the flexibility to move.

Such a change would come if we were able to convince the majority to finish the job we started on the Workforce Investment Act. It is 5 years overdue for reauthorization, and we passed it through the Senate twice, but we have never been able to have a conference committee. This legislation would mean 900,000 people a year could have better job training. So our inability to get this bill signed into law is a shame.

Again, I say this has not gone through the proper process here in the Senate and it was rushed through the House. I guess some think it is always easy to be able to catch a little publicity based on some articles in the paper and try to push something along, but if you actually want to pass a bill it doesn't work. It has to go through a normal process to pass the Senate, and that is what I am sure will happen on this bill.

I yield the floor.

A few minutes ago, we concluded the vote on H.R. 2831 that came after a very short debate. It was a clever use of the rules by the majority, I have to hand them that. There is a requirement that there can be only 1 hour of debate before the cloture vote. So we didn't have any session today until 5 p.m. The Senate was closed. That is an interesting way to limit debate. As I noted in my earlier remarks, the bill we voted on also didn't come to committee and follow the regular order.

I am very proud of the fact that Senator Kennedy and I are able to work out a lot of things on a lot of bills. In fact, I think we hold the record for major bill passage. The way we were able to do that is to work in a very bipartisan way. We have worked out difficulties and sometimes we have compromised and sometimes we have left things out so things could get done. On this bill, we never had that opportunity. We never had that courtesy. We never got to debate this for 1 minute in committee mark-up, let alone on the floor.

The debate was kind of fascinating to listen to because there is equal pay, which all of us are in favor of; and there is the pay gap, which all of us want to close. But the discussion ranged between the two, making them sound like they were the same thing. I want people to be clear that they are not. When we talk about women as a whole in the United States getting 23 cents per hour less than men do, we are not talking about equal pay for equal jobs; we are talking about pay for jobs that are not equal. We have held some hearings in our committee on this, and they have been very enlightening. If a person takes what is considered a traditional job--if a woman takes a traditional job--the jobs don't pay very well. If a woman takes a nontraditional job, they pay very well, just like the men who are doing that job. But they are not traditional jobs for women. Somehow, we have to move women from those traditional jobs, where there is overemployment, to some of the nontraditional jobs where there is underemployment.

One of the fascinating people who spoke at our committee was a young lady who became a mason. She puts rocks on buildings, and she was proud of the work she does, and she should be. She started out paving, then later adding some marble steps, then adding pieces to buildings, and then doing high-altitude work. And I want to tell you, she makes more than I do because she does something different than most people do, and it pays well.

We have this thing in America where we say there is this kind of job, and these are the people who ought to take those; and there are these other jobs, and you are probably not qualified for those. Well, when does that qualification happen? Throughout life. We have to be training people and encouraging people to do better things.

In order to encourage that kind of training we had the America COMPETES Act which we passed last year. It puts an emphasis on science, technology, engineering and math so that people can become doctors and engineers, and other high-paying jobs. We ought to get more people into these fields, but what we are getting now is fewer and fewer people into them. We are facing a shortage in those fields, except for the fact that we can bring people in from other countries who can do those because they are turning out a lot of people with the necessary skills.

I have asked the reason for that, and the answer is that they do some things we are never going to do in this country. I went to India recently and learned a lot about their education system. They promise that every kid gets an education through sixth grade, but they do not follow that promise. Only 20 percent of the girls get an education at all. They also have this little review at fourth grade to see if people are interested in education, and if they determine that you aren't they kick you out of school. Now, that is before sixth grade. That is fourth grade. They kick them out of school. Those people will

make $1 a day for the rest of their lives. At sixth grade, they have another purge and even more people are kicked out of school. We would never stand for that. Those people will make $2 a day the rest of their lives. Now, in most of the world, poverty is $1 a day, so they are above the poverty line, although they wouldn't be in the United States. So India only lets 7 percent of the kids go to college--just 7 percent. Again, we would never stand for that. We keep trying to figure out how to get more and more people into post-high school education, and that includes career and vocational education. And we need to do that. But in India, part of people's incentive to get into science, technology, engineering, and math is that those are the jobs that pay well. One person in India told me: We don't have professional sports teams, so there aren't any kids out there who are bouncing a basketball or throwing a pass or doing any of the other things that a lot of American kids are doing and thinking they are going to get to go pro. Some American kids think they are going to go pro and think they will make about $18 million a year. It is not going to happen for most of them.

I really appreciate the NCAA's ads running now that show a whole bunch of people in different professional sports, and they say there are 380,000 young people who are in college sports, and every one of them will go pro but not in their sport. That is the important line on it: not in their sport.

Somehow, we have to get more people involved in the sciences so they have the basic knowledge in grade school, which will allow them to excel in high school, which will allow them to do well in college and then allow them to get into the higher paying jobs. Men and women have equal talent in all of those areas. What we have to do is encourage that equal talent equally.

I have been trying to get the Workforce Investment Act through here, and I have gotten it through the Senate twice unanimously, but there hasn't been a willingness to go to conference committee with the House. I asked why, and I was told: Well, we are afraid of where the conference committee might go. There is no reason for that fear right now because the same people who were afraid of where it might go would be in charge of the conference committee now. If they are in charge of it, they could make sure it doesn't go anywhere they do not want it to go.

If we can pass that bill, it will provide the flexibility that will allow 900,000 people a year to train for higher skilled jobs. For many women, that will narrow the pay gap. They can go into other kinds of jobs that they may have been precluded by other events in their lives from ever getting into. If we want to narrow the wage gap, there are a number of ways to do that, but it means we have to get women into areas they haven't been traditionally working in before. That is the best solution to the wage gap argument.

Part of the difficulty in passing a bill around here is having a chance to work on the bill. The bill that came before us earlier today passed the House after being allowed only one hour of debate. Using their rules, the majority made sure no one was allowed to amend it. Now, it comes over here and bypasses the committee. The way we usually work a bill is for the chairman of the committee and the ranking member, Senator Kennedy and myself, to sit down and list out some principles that we have to check with the rest of the committee to see if they match the problem we are trying to solve. After we have those principles, we plug in details and see if we have the details right. Then we call in the stakeholders, which is really anybody interested in that issue, and we see if they agree with it.

We have found that when we can get agreements with the people on the committee and the stakeholders, we have the answer right. And most people in this body agree we have it right because most of the bills that get worked out this way get passed unanimously. A long debate for a bill that comes out of our committee is probably 2 hours.

We are going to have one of those tomorrow. It will be genetic nondiscrimination, a very important bill which, first of all, allows people to take advantage of the Genome Project. For example, if you are having your blood checked you can find out your genetic framework, which can tell you things that could happen to you in the future. And if you know they could happen to you in the future, you can take actions to keep them from ever happening.

This bill requires that if you have a genetic marker indicating that something could happen to you, your insurer is not allowed to make it a preexisting condition and your employer is not allowed to fire you over it. The bill will offer real protection that can ultimately help people live healthier longer.

The Genetic Non-Discrimination bill went through the whole process that I have described. It has even been preconferenced with the House side. So we are pretty sure that once it finishes here it will go right over to the House and the House will take care of it too. That doesn't mean we left the House and the House committee out of the process. We let them into the process. We let them into the process early so that everybody would know what was happening. But that hasn't been the case on H.R. 2831.

I am disappointed that there wasn't the need, the courage, the desire to see what the principles are on this issue and see if we could actually solve the problem. We can build a good case for equal employment because we have always voted for equal employment. We will all vote for equal employment. We all want to close the pay gap. That is a bit tougher to do, but we can do it if we work together. If we don't work together and use issues like this to score political points, it will be like so many bills that come over here and get debated for long periods of time and nothing ever happens to address the issue. The most productive place to address tough issues is the committee. In the committee, you can have a couple of people interested in one part of the issue go off by themselves and come up with a solution. Quite often, it isn't the polarized one the Republicans have or the polarized one the Democrats had. What it becomes is the third way, and that eliminates the clash of the two polarized sides.

There are so many things around here that have been debated so long that if you mention a term from that issue, you get instant rebellion from both sides. I have watched that so many times, people hear a word and jump into the weeds arguing about the broader application of that word and keeping the discussion from actually getting to the principle that is trying to be solved.

So there is a way to get these bills done, but it isn't through ``gotcha'' politics. It isn't by just bringing things here without consulting the other side to see if there are any small corrections or maybe even big corrections that can be made. And, as I said before, I happen to be disappointed that after all the cooperation we have had in the committee on other difficult issues, that there wasn't even an opportunity for cooperation in the committee on this one.

I believe there are some solutions out there, but they are not going to be arrived at on the floor of the Senate. What happens here on the floor is that both sides bring a series of amendments that we think will put the other side in a bad light if they vote against it. It isn't just one side that will do it, both sides will do it. So we need to have a little more civil way of solving this problem, and I have confidence it can be done.

I thank the Chair, and I yield the floor.

Mr. President, in light of the fact that a few minutes ago we opened the Senate in prayer, I want to say that last month I had the privilege of cochairing with the Senator from Colorado, Senator Salazar, the 56th Annual National Prayer Breakfast, held here in our Nation's Capital. This annual gathering is hosted by Members of the Senate and the House of Representatives, who have weekly prayer breakfast groups. Once again, we were honored to have the 56th consecutive participation of our President and the First Lady. Presidents since Dwight Eisenhower have spoken at the annual prayer breakfast. We were encouraged and inspired by the remarks shared by Ward Brehm. Unfortunately, a transcript doesn't give the superb pauses and delivery that we who attended got to enjoy, but it is a superb message I want to share.

This year, we hosted a gathering of over 3,500 individuals from all walks of life in all 50 States and from many countries around the world. So that all may benefit from this time together, on behalf of the Congressional Committee for the National Prayer Breakfast, I ask unanimous consent that a copy of the transcript of the 2008 proceedings be printed in the Congressional Record at the conclusion of my speech.

Mr. President, this is an example of what we do in our weekly prayer breakfast, with little exception, and the presenters at our weekly prayer breakfast are always Senators or former Senators. It is a chance for us to get to know each person in this body as they present.

I thank the Chair and yield the floor.

Exhibit 1

56th National Prayer Breakfast,

Thursday, February 7, 2008,

Hilton Washington Hotel,

Washington, DC

Co-Chairs: U.S. Senator Mike Enzi and U.S. Senator Ken Salazar

U.S. Senator Mike Enzi: I would bet that some of you are

wondering, ``How did I get here?'' and ``What kind of an

outfit is this?'' We will try to explain a little bit. Ken

and I are part of a very small breakfast group made up

entirely of Senators that has met every Wednesday that the

Senate has been in session since the middle part of the

Truman administration. That was in the late 1940's. We share

with each other, we eat, we pray and we discuss things that

really matter.

I am reminded of a time I was in South Africa meeting with

their parliament for a breakfast and I suggested that our

Senate prayer breakfast could pray for their issues. A

parliamentarian named Paul brought me up short and said,

``Don't pray for the issues, pray for the people and the

people will solve the issues.'' And that is what we do at our

weekly prayer breakfast. That is what we will be doing here.

Now once a year we hold our weekly meeting in a slightly

bigger room and we invite 4,000 people from around the world

to come along for the ride. Welcome to our prayer breakfast.

(Applause)

U.S. Senator Ken Salazar: We count it a privilege to serve

in the United States Senate but frankly it is not always an

easy job. President Truman once said that if you want to have

a friend in Washington, buy a dog. We see that all the time.

Our breakfast in the U.S. Senate is an attempt to put back

into all of us what the job takes out from all of us and

gives us a reason to have trusting relationships, to find

wisdom and to reconcile our differences.

For me, I don't need to buy a dog in Washington, D.C.

because I have a friend named Mike Enzi. (Laughter) Mike Enzi

brings his common sense, compassion and approach to the

issues that face our nation and it makes him a key leader in

the United States Senate. That helps us get to results by

putting the public purpose above the politics which sometimes

so confines this town.

Washington, in my view, does not need a lot more speeches.

It needs people who need to seek and listen and to

understand. More people like Mike and his wife Diana, who is

here with us this morning. It has been my honor and pleasure

to serve with Mike Enzi for the last three years in the U.S.

Senate.

Senator Enzi: I have enjoyed getting to know Ken and the

deep wealth of heritage and caring that he brings to the

Senate. His family has lived in Colorado for 150 years--

longer than there has been a Colorado. Our connection began

personally and now we are able to talk about things that

Republicans and Democrats do not talk about together. And

what do you know? We have figured some things out. We are a

couple of guys from the high plains, Colorado and Wyoming,

who are trying to keep things on a higher plane in our jobs.

We have been working on this breakfast for many months now

and we hope you enjoy it. A lot of prayer has gone into it

and we hope it somehow scratches where you itch.

One special note, folks, Dr. Billy Graham attended the

Breakfast and was the main speaker for the first few years.

He sent a special word to us last night that he would be with

us in spirit this morning and is praying for us at this very

moment from his home in North Carolina. Thank you for your

prayers and a lifetime of spiritual leadership, Billy.

(Applause)

Senator Salazar: 155 nations are represented here this

morning in Washington, D.C. I now want to introduce to all of

you the distinguished heads of state who have joined us from

other lands today: The Chairman of the Council of the

Ministers of Bosnia-Herzegovina, Prime Minister Nicola

Spiric; The President of the Republic of Burundi, Pierre

Nkurunziza; The President of the Republic of El Salvador,

Elias Antonio Saca Gonzalez, and the First Lady; The

President of the Republic of Honduras, Jose Manuel Zelaya

Rosales; The President of the Federated States of Micronesia,

Immanuel Mori; and The Prime Minister of the Independent

State of Samoa, Prime Minister Tuila'epa Lupesoliai Sailele

Malielegaoi. (Applause)

You are all most welcome. Thank you for giving that warm

welcome to our guests here to the United States of America.

We live with human borders but we are one family across the

face of the earth. Thank you for the honor of your presence

and the chance to get to know you as friends and fellow

travelers in search of truth and a better world.

Senator Enzi: When one of our members heard that our singer

was Michael W. Smith he said, ``Well that's worth getting out

of bed early for.'' Michael is here with his wife, Debbie,

this morning. He has been recording faithful music for more

than two decades and won countless awards but he does not

want the focus to be on him. He has always encouraged his

fans, young and old, that faith is not a spectator sport. He

has encouraged tens of thousands to sponsor children all over

the world. We are happy to have two selections from him this

morning. The first is ``Above All.''

Mr. Michael W. Smith: (sings) [``Above all powers above all

kings''] (Applause)

Senator Enzi: Oh, how faith shines. Thank you, Michael.

Everybody in life needs role models, including Senators.

Senator Dianne Feinstein is that for many of the new members

of the Senate. She personifies dignity and excellence in

doing the people's work. She did that as the Mayor of San

Francisco and she is certainly doing that in the Senate. To

present a reading, our friend and colleague, Senator Dianne

Feinstein of California.

U.S. Senator Dianne Feinstein: Thank you very much Senator

Enzi. Mr. President, Mrs. Bush, ladies and gentlemen.

Religion is a very personal thing to me. I have been

privileged to draw on two of the world's great religions--one

being Judaism, and the other, Catholicism. I went to a

Catholic convent while I was going to a Jewish Sunday school.

Some people would say that left me very confused. But

nonetheless it was a very special experience. A very young

rabbi wrote what I am going to read. It is now part of

Reformed Judaism's prayer book and is used in the High Holy

Day services. I would like to share it with you.

``Birth is a beginning, and death a destination and life is

a journey: From childhood to maturity, and youth to age. From

innocence to awareness, and ignorance to knowing. From

foolishness to discretion and then perhaps to wisdom. From

weakness to strength or strength to weakness and often back

again. From health to sickness and back we pray to health

again. From offense to forgiveness. From loneliness to love.

From joy to gratitude. From pain to compassion and grief to

understanding. From fear to faith. From defeat to defeat, to

defeat until looking backward or ahead we see that victory

lies not at some high place along the way but in having made

the journey stage by stage a sacred pilgrimage. Birth is a

beginning and death a destination and life is a journey, a

sacred pilgrimage to life everlasting.''

Thank you. (Applause)

U.S. Representative Bart Stupak: I am Bart Stupak, co-chair

of the House Prayer Breakfast. In my sixteen years in the

house this is the second time that I have had the honor to

address you from the dais. Some things never change--the

National Prayer Breakfast remains heavy on prayer and light

on breakfast. (Laughter) As we join in fellowship, filled

with the Holy Spirit, I ask that you remember two House

members who were devoted to the Prayer Breakfast and who are

no longer with us, Congresswoman Jo Ann Davis and

Congresswoman Julia Carson. We miss them. Now let me turn the

podium over to my co-chair, friend and colleague, Gresham

Barrett of South Carolina.

U.S. Representative J. Gresham Barrett: Good morning. Two

things--number one, we

will not take up a love offering today and number two, we are

here to feed your soul. If you want to feed the body with ham

and grits and eggs we are going to the Waffle House after

this, OK? I do concur with Bart on that. It is an honor to be

here. Bart told me that being from South Carolina I tend to

speak a little bit slowly, but if I speak any slower it will

take all day so I will speed up just a little bit.

I want to tell you a little bit about what we do in the

House during our Prayer Breakfast. It is a bi-partisan

meeting. We meet every Thursday at 8 o'clock. We talk amongst

ourselves with fellowship, with food, with laughter. We pray

for one another, we pray for folks that we don't know. It is

open to members and former members, sometimes we have foreign

dignitaries. But the biggest thing of all is to be an

encouragement to each other. That is a little bit about how

we do it. The question is ``Why do we do it?'' And I can sum

it up the best in Paul's letter to the Corinthians. I

Corinthians 13:13: ``And now abideth faith, hope and love,

these three, but the greatest is love.'' We meet together

because we love each other, we love our families, we love

what we do, we love this nation and I believe that the one

thing we can do that is stronger than anything is to love. If

you don't take anything away from this Prayer Breakfast this

morning, remember this: someone in this room loves you. And

more important than that, someone up above has given us the

greatest gift of love. Thank you for being here this morning

and have a blessed day.

Senator Salazar: Thank you, Congressman Stupak and

Congressman Barrett. Part of what we try and celebrate here

as well is our nation's government and to pray for our

nation's government. Certainly the judiciary is very much a

part of our government and our democracy. This morning I am

honored to introduce my great friend and one of the most

distinguished jurists in the United States of America, the

Honorable Judge Carlos Lucero of the 10th Circuit Court of

Appeals. Judge Lucero practiced law in my native, beautiful

San Luis Valley in Colorado and like my family Judge Lucero's

family helped found the city of Santa Fe, New Mexico, the

city of Holy Faith, back in 1598. For the last 12 years he

has served with distinction on the 10th Circuit Court of

Appeals. To lead us in prayer for our national leaders help

me welcome Judge Carlos Lucero.

The Honorable Carlos E. Lucero: Good morning, Mr. President

and Mrs. Bush. As Ken says, our families go way back and

these early pioneers were sustained in their travels to what

was to them the new world by this deep abiding faith and

great sense of belief and commitment. Some of my earliest

memories of my grandfather were before there was

electrification--his sitting next to a window reading the

Bible and caring deeply about his prayer. My parents hauling

us children, as I am sure Ken's parents did as well, to go to

these early old adobe churches of southern Colorado and

northern New Mexico for their Te Deums. And it is really the

parents of the United States, the great families who

inculcate their children with a belief in God and with a

belief in values and in prayer that are the genuine heroes of

the United States. Back in the earliest of days the faith of

these pioneers carried them. There was an early territorial

governor of New Mexico who is said to have prayed at one

time, ``pobre Nuevo Mexico, poor little New Mexico'' he said,

``so far from heaven, so close to Texas.'' (Laughter)

As public officials all of us take the oath of office to

support and defend the constitution of the United States. The

American history flows back to those images of the

President raising his arm and stating his oath. The rest

of us too are required, constitutionally, to take our oath

of office or affirmation, the constitution allows both, to

support the constitution of the United States. My prayer

today relates to seeking God's help in asking that the

leaders of our country faithfully discharge our

obligations and that we might have the providence of God,

the Creator, in aiding us to do so.

Dear God, as each of us may worship you in the many creeds

represented here today, my prayer is that you bless our

country, our government, the President of the United States

and his family, the members of the United States Senate, the

United States House of Representatives, the Justices of the

United States Supreme Court and the members of the federal

judiciary and all of our families. I ask the blessings of God

on the governors of the states, the state legislatures and

judges, the mayors of our cities, the members of our city

councils throughout the United States and all those who serve

in public service, most especially on the officers and the

men and women of the United States military who serve our

beloved country and our beloved constitution so faithfully.

May the Almighty grant us the wisdom and sound judgment to

discharge our constitutional oath with the clearest of

conscience and that our every action on behalf of the people

of the United States be true and loyal and faithful to you

and to this document. I pray that the citizens of our country

may be blessed with your Spirit and citizens of all races and

creeds may forge a common bond in true harmony, to banish

hatred and replace it with love, to banish bigotry and

replace it with understanding and to safeguard the ideals of

free institutions that are the pride and glory of our country

and of this world. I pray that this land under your

providence may be an influence for good throughout the world,

uniting all people in peace and in freedom. I have a very

brief reading from the Old Testament today that I would like

to conclude my prayer with. One word of explanation in

speaking to friends of many denominations in preparing for

today's prayer--I learned that in the earliest days of the

history of the Old Testament when the tribes went forth,

there were no kings or leaders as such but the judges

governed, so a rabbi tells me. Don't think that I am getting

any ideas. I know those of us in the judiciary know what is

buzzed about us but you have to have that understanding to

have a deeper understanding of what the Old Testament means

as it speaks of judgment because of the special ethics and

requirements that were imposed on these earliest leaders.

From the book of Deuteronomy chapter 1 verses 15-17:

``So I took the leading men of your tribes, wise and

respected men, and appointed them to have authority over

you--as commanders of thousands, of hundreds, of fifties and

of tens and as tribal officials. And I charged your judges at

that time: Hear the disputes between your brothers and judge

fairly, whether the case is between brother Israelites or

between one of them and an alien. Do not show partiality in

judging; hear both small and great alike. Do not be afraid of

any man, for judgment belongs to God.''

And from chapter 6 verse 8 of the book of Micah:

``He has showed you, O man, what is good; and what does the

Lord require of you but to act justly and to love mercy and

to walk humbly with your God.'' Amen.

Senator Enzi: Historically, we have been honored to have a

member of the United States military be a part of our

leadership of this breakfast and today we go all the way

to the top of the chain of command--Admiral Michael Mullen

is the Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff. He is joined

this morning by his wife, Deborah. He was born in Los

Angeles, graduated from the Naval Academy and has served

our nation all over the world. To present our second

reading from the Holy Scriptures, Admiral Michael Mullen.

Admiral Michael Mullen: Mr. President and Mrs. Bush, good

morning everyone. It is great to see all of you and join you

in worship this morning. I testified before Congress

yesterday so believe me I know the value of prayer.

(Laughter) The verse I would like to read is from the book of

Philippians. It is short, powerful, poetic and concise. It

reminds me daily in this time of war and great uncertainty of

the things of which we must always remain certain. It speaks

to me of the nobility of service to one another, to the

nation and to a cause greater than one's self and it calls to

mind the sacrifices of those who serve and of the families

and loved ones who wait and worry and support those men and

women in uniform who serve this noble cause. Philippians 4:

8,9 ``. . . whatever things are true, whatever things are

noble, whatever things are just, whatever things are pure,

whatever things are lovely, whatever things are of good

report, if there is any virtue and if there is anything

praiseworthy, think on these things. Those things, which you

have learned, and received, and heard and seen in me, do; and

the God of peace shall be with you.'' Thank you.

Senator Salazar: I am delighted to introduce my good friend

from Minnesota, Senator Amy Klobuchar. Her husband, John

Bessler is with her this morning. In her short time as a

member of the United States Senate she has become one of the

stars of our Senate. With the values of the Iron Range and

the sharp mind and tongue of a prosecutor she is the champion

of the people of Minnesota. To lead us in prayer for world

leaders, Senator Amy Klobuchar.

U.S. Senator Amy Klobuchar: Thank you, Senator Salazar,

President Bush, Mrs. Bush, members of Congress, friends. It

is an honor to be here today to share a prayer for our world

leaders. Like so many who are gathered here today, my faith

came from those before me. Their worlds did not stretch the

globe like the leaders for whom we will pray today instead

they lived in much simpler, humbler circumstances but they

still had the courage to believe. My grandpa worked 1,500

feet underground in the mines in Ely, Minnesota and never

graduated from high school but he saved money in a coffee can

in the basement to send my dad to college. Up in Iron Range

there is a rollicking collision of ethnic cultures from the

Slovenians to the Serbs to the Croatians and to the Finns. My

grandma and grandpa were Catholic and you could worship up on

the range at polka masses held by an entrepreneurial polka

priest, named Father Frank Perkovich. He did so well that he

has been last heard of as a priest on a Caribbean cruise

line. Prayer is needed everywhere. But my faith also comes

from my mom who never learned to drive until I was in high

school but who was bound and determined to get our family to

church. Once a week she would load us into a cab, which was

quite a sight in a middle class Minnesota suburb on a Sunday

morning, and it was my job to say at the end of the drive to

the driver, ``add 50 cents please.'' I would be so nervous

that I would forget to say this and deny the driver his tip

that the entire way to church I would say in my head, ``add

50 cents, please, add 50 cents, please.'' Today I can never

go to church without thinking, `add 50 cents please'. That I

got from my mom. And, finally, my faith comes from my dad

who became a popular newspaper columnist and an avid

adventurer. He climbed mountains the world over but his

faith was

tested time and time again through his own battle with

alcoholism. I watched him climb the highest peaks, but at

times slip in the lowest valleys. He finally overcame it

when in his own words, he was pursued by grace.

We bow our heads today, God, to pray that our world leaders

may also be pursued by grace. God, in the Himalayas of Nepal

there is a simple greeting that today we share as a simple

blessing for our world leaders. When the Nepalese see a

friend they bow their heads and clasp their hands and say,

Namaste, which in its most spiritual translation means, ``I

praise the God that lives within you.'' God, in this time of

year when an English poet once described it as the bleak mid-

winter, we are experiencing world events that too often match

that somber description. We pray that when our world leaders

are confronted by religion used to divide us, they will find

the God that lives within them to guide them to common ground

in peace. God, we pray that our leaders find the God that

lives within them to work together across borders to cure

disease, confront hunger and poverty and offer hope to the

children of the world. God, as the icebergs melt and the seas

flood we ask that our world leaders listen to you and answer

your call to care for your creation, to treasure the changing

of the seasons and to remember the philosophy of the Ojibwe

Indians that great leaders' decisions are not always made for

today but for children seven generations from now. And, God,

we know that leadership is sometimes a lonely place, wisdom

is often illusive and making the right choice can be hard but

we pray that when burdened with difficult decisions our

leaders will heed the God that lives within them and find the

best that is in our humanity, draw from the best of our

history and instincts and enlist the energy of our young. To

all our world leaders we praise the God that lives within

you. Namaste. Amen.

Senator Enzi: I am proud now to introduce our speaker, Ward

Brehm. I knew him before I ever met him. I was involved in

the United States AIDS bill and was headed to Africa to see

what could be done. I was given a copy of a book called

``White Man Walking,'' written by Ward, telling of his effort

to get to know the people of a continent face to face, step

by step. As I read about how the Lord used Africa to change

his life it changed mine. Ward serves as the chair of the

board of the United States Africa Development Fund, a small

agency with a very big job--that of making micro investments

across Africa that build people up through emerging private

enterprise. Ward's wife, Chris, is here with us at the head

table as well. After I read his book I got to work with his

confirmation in the Senate. I then got to work with him to

increase the agency's budget. He encouraged and was

successful in getting countries to match the monies. He found

customers for products made in Africa without going through

middlemen. He has traveled to Africa more than 30 times. Each

time he has a prayer and a scripture for each day of his

journey and several of us join him in prayer from the United

States as he makes a difference in Africa. Did you ever

wonder what would happen if you allowed the Lord to really

get a hold of your life and use you for His purposes? Here is

a pretty good example of what happens when a great God gets a

chance to use a regular person like you and me. Ladies and

gentlemen, my friend, Ward Brehm.

Mr. Ward Brehm: Thank you, Senator Enzi. I am deeply

humbled by your introduction and proud to be able to call you

my friend.

Most of you were probably surprised when you picked up your

program and saw a speaker you have never heard of before. I

want to tell you, you are not alone. One month ago, I sent in

my registration to this breakfast and I was just hoping for a

good seat. (Laughter)

My thanks also to the members of the Senate group for this

opportunity. A good friend emailed me last night and said

that if God was going to speak through me, I did not need to

be nervous . . . God is the one who should be nervous!

(Laughter)

My wife read to me from Scriptures last night that Jesus

said when two or more gather in His name, He will be there.

That is good enough for me!

My work has given me the high privilege of serving you, Mr.

President, the American people, and above all, the poor in

Africa.

The best way to help the poor is to help them not be poor

anymore. The only way I know how to do that is through job

creation, and the very best form of sustainable development

is a steady paycheck.

It has been said that if you give a man a fish, you feed

him for a day; teach a man to fish, and you feed him for a

lifetime. But that is not the full story. If you want to eat

for a lifetime, you need to own the pond.

So a bit of background . . . Despite that eloquent

introduction, I am a recovering Type-A controlling

businessman. I have been described even by people who like me

as someone who is often wrong but seldom in doubt. I was a

bit of a problem child growing up. In fact, my pastor since

childhood, Arthur Rouner, recently referred to me as a

ministerial long shot!

They say that if God wants to get your attention he will

toss a little pebble into your life. If that doesn't work, He

will throw a rock. As a last resort, He will heave a brick!

Africa was my brick. In 1994, Africa was not on my personal

radar screen. In fact, the only significant thing on that

radar screen was ME!

In the Los Angeles airport I bought a copy of Stephen

Covey's book, The Seven Habits for Highly Effective People. I

didn't buy it to learn anything, but just wanted to make sure

that he got them all right. (Laughter)

I was intrigued by Covey's notion of paradigms: identical

sets of facts can mean something totally different because of

your world view.

Somalia was in the news at the time, and countless numbers

of Africans were dying from starvation. I felt no real

connection to this humanitarian crisis. My radar screen was

full.

Paradigms usually change because of shock or trauma, but I

wondered if it might be possible for someone to change their

paradigm on purpose. I supposed that if I were to see

people starving, it would change that paradigm and perhaps

much more. The thought left me as quickly as it came.

But God sent me a reminder . . . One week later, I made one

of my occasional stops at church . . . and my pastor, out of

the blue, took me aside and said, ``Ward, I'm going to Africa

in two months, and I would like you to go with me.''

I told him I couldn't believe the coincidence of his

invitation given my recent reflections on Somalia. Then I

said . . . ``No!'' (Laughter)

He looked at me in a strange way, and he said, ``Would you

at least pray about it?'' I looked at him and said, ``You're

the pastor; YOU pray about it. I will THINK about it but

suspect my answer will be.'' (Laughter)

He must have prayed hard . . . because two months later, I

found myself in the Minneapolis airport with a ticket to

Ethiopia in my hand. I was surrounded by (for the lack of a

better word) church ladies. (Laughter) And they were hugging

me . . . (Laughter) Then someone suggested that we pray

before we departed, so I found myself outside Gate 8A,

holding hands with a group of strangers. And as I stand here

before the National Prayer Breakfast, I can honestly say I

uttered my first heartfelt and sincere prayer . . . ``Lord,

don't let any of my clients see me!'' (Laughter)

And then we flew twelve thousand miles to Africa, and a

million miles from my comfort zone. I had the high privilege

of having my heart broken. I saw poverty on an obscene level.

Children with flies on their eyes and for the lack of a 50

cent medicine doomed to blindness, the emaciated faces of

famine, families shattered by civil war. In Masaka, Uganda I

held the hand of a 22-year-old mother as she died of AIDS and

then turned to look directly into the faces of four brand new

orphans.

I was an eyewitness. It put a face on the statistics. I

always believed that those statistics were true, but now they

become real. It got personal. . . .

More recently, I took a long walk with a warrior turned

pastor friend, Lodinyo, deep into an unknown wilderness along

the northern Rift Valley that divides northwest Kenya with

Uganda. He took me to where they had never seen a person with

white skin. When they first spotted me, they thought I was a

ghost . . . a dead man walking. For a while, I thought they

would be right.

I fasted for five days on this walk to experience real

hunger, but had brought along protein bars in case of (as

Lodinyo put it) an ``emergency''. At the end of this walk, I

collapsed in a borrowed sleeping hut. When I awoke 13 hours

later, I saw a little boy peeking through the door. While he

was initially terrified, curiosity eventually got the best of

him, and I noticed he was concentrating more on my stash of

power bars than he was on me. He succeeded in snatching a

bar, and immediately ran away. ``Kids are the same

everywhere,'' I thought, until I stepped outside the hut, and

I found that little boy kneeling over his two-year old sister

with a terribly distended stomach, feeding her tiny pieces of

protein. . . .

Three months later, I was to learn that she died . . .

another paradigm shift.

Now after more than 30 trips to Africa, the question that I

have been asked more than any other by my African friends is

``What do you pray for?''

Most of us among the affluent have too many things. Too

much food, multiple cars, great health care, retirement,

insurance . . .

It is only when things fall apart completely, and we are

totally out of control that we feel totally dependent, and

thus closest to God. Death, cancer, business failure,

addiction, divorce, crises; these are the things that truly

drop us to our knees.

All across the world, including America, things are

continuously falling apart for the truly poor . . . They are

always out of control, constantly living in crises mode, and

thus dependent and faithful to God's own commandment that we

love Him with all of our hearts. God is often all the poor

have.

The leaders that God anoints are their only hope. And

despite the often-horrific conditions that they live in, the

poor are thankful for their very existence.

Scripture asks, ``Hasn't God chosen those who are poor in

the eyes of the world to be rich in faith and to inherit the

Kingdom?'' Yes, He has. I have seen it with my own eyes.

The question that I am asked by most of my American friends

is, ``Why cross an ocean to help people when you need only

cross the street, to help your own?'' It is a great question,

and the answer is, of course, that we need to do both.

Solzhenitsyn said that disaster is defined by two things:

magnitude and distance. So a small disaster close to home or

a huge disaster faraway, results in what he describes

as ``bearable disasters of bearable proportion.'' We have

become too good at ``bearing.'' Our hearts should be broken

by the things that break the heart of God.

Specifically in Africa, there are many faraway disasters of

epic proportions. In 1994, in Rwanda, a country the size of

Maryland, the political genocide claimed over 800,000 lives:

9,000 lives per day for 90 days. That is two World Trade

Center disasters per day for three months.

Today, in Darfur, Sudan, 1.5 million homeless. Thousands

terrorized, raped and killed. AIDS is killing 4,400 people

per day in Africa, and even more are dying from curable

malaria. Epic disasters of epic proportions, far from home

for most of us. We have hundreds today right here in this

room from all around the world, our neighbors this morning,

who experience these epic disasters close to home.

I do want to say while I have the chance with the President

sitting right here. Very few people are aware that due to

President Bush's commitment and the resulting partnership

with Congress there has been an absolutely historic four-fold

increase in American assistance to fight poverty and AIDS

in Africa.

In 2003 there were 50,000 Africans on Anti-Viral medication

and today there are over 1.5 million. I have not met a SINGLE

person who hasn't agreed with this high calling.

Proverbs the book of Wisdom says ``speak up for those who

can not speak for themselves and defend the rights of the

poor and destitute.'' You have been that voice and on behalf

of the ``least of these'' in Africa as well as the collective

American conscience, I want to say . . .``Thank you Mr.

President.'' (Applause)

Do you remember when Jesus was talking to His disciples,

and asked them when He was hungry, why they didn't give Him

any food, and when He was naked, why they didn't give Him any

clothes? And the disciples said something like, ``Lord, we

never did any of those things to You.'' I always thought

(like most folks) that Jesus replied ``Whenever you did this

to the least of these, you did this unto Me.''

Except that's not what He said. What He said was, ``When

ever you did this to one of the least of these, you did this

unto Me.''

How often do we forget the word ``one.''

It changes the meaning of what Jesus said completely. In

our quest to be helpful, we can rob the poor of their

dignity. In order to be of any help to the poor, we need to

understand them, we need to know them, and we need to love

them. They are not a group. The poor is not a species. They

are identical to us in their hopes and dreams. They love

their families and long for a better life. The only

difference is that they are poor.

And people don't suffer and die in groups. It is one at a

time. And each one of those deaths leaves an identical wake

of agony to what you and I and our families would experience.

So what are we supposed to do with all this? How does this

fit with our world, so different and so far away? Frankly, I

am not sure, but we do have some clues. Jesus said, ``The

poor will always be with you.'' What an odd thing to say,

especially coming from Him!

Jesus also said, ``To whom much has been given, much will

be expected.'' So maybe this is a test of sorts. If so . . .

how are we doing?

I have heard stories similar to mine of peoples' lives

being changed: from orphanages in Russia to inner-city

schools in Minneapolis, from the slums of Calcutta to remote

medical clinics in the mountains of Afghanistan, from the

streets of Washington, D.C., to wretched prisons in East

Asia. Indeed, all across the world people are answering

Jesus' question, ``Who is my neighbor?'' And these people are

finding themselves changed, engaged, and discovering

meaning and relevance by being involved in things much

bigger than themselves.

I believe that, deep down, most people would love to have

God change their lives. Here's the thing: If asked, He will,

every time, guaranteed. And while these changes may initially

seem scary, they ultimately lay a foundation for a life lived

on purpose rather than by default.

I will forever be indebted to Africa. Africa awakened me

when I didn't even know I was asleep. I pray that everyone

who seeks one will find a similar path.

I pray that each of you will find your own Africa. . . .

A few years ago my friend, Gary Haugen, asked me the most

important question of all . . .

For those four orphans I was with in Uganda who watched

their mother die of AIDS and were suddenly and completely on

their own . . . For a twelve year old girl kidnapped and sold

into slavery in rural India . . . For a single mom evicted

and homeless on the streets of Washington, D.C. . . . For

each one of them: What is God's strategy for letting them

know that He's good?

For the mother in Ethiopia who sees her baby die of

malnutrition--Why would she think God is good? And what is

God's strategy for allowing her to know that He loves her?

The answer is astounding. The answer is . . . US!

Even more astonishing . . . He has no plan B. . . .

God bless you one and all. (Applause)

Senator Salazar: Thank you, Ward Brehm, for that

inspirational message. Ladies and gentlemen and guests from

around the world, it is my honor to introduce to all of you

the President of our United States. We are delighted to see

with President Bush his lovely and wonderful wife, Laura.

(Applause)

For all of us gathered here today in Washington, D.C. we

know that this is a funny town. If you only read the papers

you would think the Democrats and Republicans simply never

work together. The truth is since I first met the President

several years ago we have had a friendship that has helped us

work on issues that are important to our nation, including

the issues of renewable energy and the issues of immigration

reform. It is a friendship that is rooted in our shared love

for our nation, our faith and our reverence for family. The

President and I have spoken several times about the powerful

impact that our fathers have had on our lives. Our dad's

stories show how the American experience can send different

people down different paths to fulfill truly the American

dream. World War II inspired both of our fathers to don the

uniform of their country. The American West inspired their

love for open spaces and for the ranching traditions of our

states. Their love of God inspired them to work long days

in service to generations to come. And so here we are

today, the President of the United States and a United

States Senator from Colorado, bound by our service to our

country, by our faith in humanity, and by our hope that we

too will be heroes to our daughters as our fathers were to

all of us.

Ladies and Gentlemen, the President of the United States of

America. (Applause)

The President of the United States: Thank you all. Gracias,

mi amigo. Thank you, friend. Laura and I are honored to join

you all here for the 56th National Prayer Breakfast. There

are a lot of reasons to pray and one of course is to

strengthen us against temptation--particularly this morning,

the temptation to stay in bed. (Laughter)

Obviously there are a lot of prayerful people here and I

appreciate your warm welcome.

We have a lot of distinguished guests here today, members

of Congress, military leaders, captains of industry. Yet at

this annual gathering we are reminded of an eternal truth,

when we lift our hearts to God we are all equal in His sight.

We are all equally precious; we are all equally dependant on

His grace. It is fitting that we gather each year to approach

our Creator in fellowship and to thank Him for the many

blessings He has bestowed upon our families and our nation.

It is fitting that we gather in prayer because we recognize a

prayerful nation is a stronger nation.

I appreciate Senators Salazar and Enzi. Thank you for

putting this event on.

Madame Speaker, Leader Hoyer, Leader Blunt, thank you for

being here.

I welcome the members of Congress. I appreciate the Heads

of State who are here. Welcome to America, again.

I thank the members of the Diplomatic Corps who joined us.

I appreciate the distinguished dignitaries, all the members

of my cabinet--don't linger, get back to work. (Laughter)

Admiral, thank you for your leadership. I am always proud to

be with the members of the United States military. I thank

the state and local officials. Ward, thanks for your remarks.

Those were awesome. I guess that is a presidential word. I am

proud to be here with Michael W. and Debbie, long time

friends of our family. Thank you for lending your beautiful

voice. Judge, I am not going to hold the Texas thing against

you. (Laughter)

Every President since Dwight Eisenhower has attended the

National Prayer Breakfast--and I am really proud to carry on

this tradition. It is an important tradition, and I am

confident Presidents who follow me will do the same. The

people in this room come from many different walks of faith.

Yet we share one clear conviction: We believe that the

Almighty hears our prayers--and answers those who seek Him.

That is what we believe; otherwise, why come? That through

the miracle of prayer, we believe he listens--if we listen to

his voice and seek His presence in our lives, our hearts will

change. And in so doing, in seeking God, we grow in ways that

we could never imagine.

And in prayer we grow in gratitude and thanksgiving. When

we spend time with the Almighty we realize how much he has

bestowed upon us and our hearts are filled with joy. We give

thanks for our families, we give thanks for the parents who

raised us, we give thanks for the patient souls who married

us and the children who make us proud each day. We give

thanks for our liberty and the universal desire for freedom

that He has written in every human heart. We give thanks for

the God who made us in His image and redeemed us in His love.

In prayer we grow in meekness and humility. By approaching

our Maker on bended knee we acknowledge our complete

dependence on Him. We recognize that we have nothing to offer

God that He does not already have, except our love. So we

offer Him that love and ask for the grace to discern His

will. We ask Him to remain near to us at all times. We ask

Him to help us lead lives that are pleasing to Him. We

discover that by surrendering our lives to the Almighty we

are strengthened, refreshed and ready for all that may come.

In prayer we also grow in boldness and courage.

The more time we spend with God, the more we see that He is

not a distant king but a loving Father. Inspired by this

confidence we approach Him with bold requests, we ask Him to

heal the sick and comfort the dying and sustain those who

care for them. We ask

Him to bring solace to the victims of tragedy and help to

those suffering from addiction and adversity. We ask Him to

strengthen our families and to protect the innocent and

vulnerable in our country. We ask Him to protect our nation

from those who wish us harm and watch over all who step

forward to defend us. We ask Him to bring about the day when

His peace shall reign across the world and every tear shall

be wiped away.

In prayer we grow in mercy and compassion. We are reminded

in prayer that we are all fallen creatures in need of mercy.

And in seeking God's mercy we grow in mercy ourselves.

Experiencing the presence of God transforms our hearts and

the more we seek His presence, the more we feel the tug at

our souls to reach out to the poor and the hungry, the

elderly and the infirmed.

When we answer God's call to love a neighbor as ourselves

we enter into a deeper friendship with our fellow man and a

deeper relationship with our Eternal Father.

I believe in the power of prayer because I felt it in my

own life. Prayer has strengthened me in times of personal

challenge. It has helped me meet the challenges of the

presidency. I understand now clearly the story of the calm in

the rough seas. And so at this final prayer breakfast as your

President, I thank you for your prayers and I thank our

people all across America for their prayers and I ask you not

to stop in the year ahead. We have so much work to do for our

country. And with the help of the Almighty we will build a

freer world and a safer, a more hopeful, a more noble,

America. God bless. (Applause)

Senator Enzi: Thank you, Mr. President for that prayer for

our country. We thank you for your presence here. This is the

56th consecutive time that a President of the United States

has been at the National Prayer Breakfast, a tremendous and

important tradition. Ladies and gentlemen, we would ask that

you please remain at your places as the President and First

Lady take their leave of us. And we do thank you for your

presence, Mr. President, and the faithful way that you strive

to carry the burdens of our nation. I know all of us want to

join in saying we will pray for you and for your spouse and

for your family that the Lord will give you success in your

efforts toward the common needs of all mankind, which are

life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness.

God bless you, Mr. President and Mrs. Bush. (Applause)

Mr. Smith: (Sings) [``Amazing Grace''] (Applause)

Senator Enzi: Thank you, Michael for the gift of worship as

you do it so well through song. We're very grateful for all

at our head table, the participants and the loving,

thoughtful spirit that they have shared with all of us. I

know that when I leave today, I will take with me the

prayers, the scriptures, the words of our two speakers and

try to remember that the word ``one'' is the important part

to the least and that we all have the opportunity to do our

part. I hope that God doesn't get too nervous when He is

working through us. This has been an outstanding morning. We

have shared with you a little bit of what our Wednesday

prayer breakfast is like, it is the way we get filled up

during the week and I hope this has helped to fill you today.

Senator Salazar: We hope you have all been encouraged. We

hope you have been challenged. We hope you take the faith and

hope and optimism and challenges that Ward Brehm has

presented to us here today that not only in Africa, but in

Latin America and all across this world that we work for a

more perfect world and I am sure that this prayer breakfast

will help us move along the way. Thank you to the 4,000

people who are here, to the millions around the world who are

praying for us, to the 155 nations who are represented here

knowing at the end of the day we are one human race. Thank

you for coming this morning.

Mr. President, I wish to discuss the cost of health care and what the Senate can do this year to make health care more affordable for America's working families.

Last summer I introduced a bill, Ten Steps to Transform Healthcare in America, which if enacted would provide every American with private health insurance. To help spread the word and get some suggestions and comments from the people of Wyoming, I took it on the road and headed throughout our State, making 10 stops to talk about my bill, Ten Steps to Transform Healthcare in America.

I designed Ten Steps to be an evolving product, something that could be moved in pieces. I have found that Congress isn't very successful doing things in a revolutionary way. I believe we can have success and accomplish real health care reform in an evolutionary fashion.

In just over 3 days we traveled over 1,200 miles, visited 10 towns, and met with hundreds of Wyoming folks. They all had one message for us--they are worried about their health care, and so am I. Of all of the Ten Steps, one in particular created a host of comments and support: Step No. 4, Small Business Health Plans. You see, 70 percent of the people in Wyoming work for small businesses. They experience firsthand the challenges of finding affordable health insurance and keeping it.

So today I am introducing Step 4 of my Ten Steps bill, the Small Business Health Plans Act of 2008, to give a special level of focus to the need to find a way to help small businesses stem the tide of rising health care costs. They simply cannot keep up with the increases and are clamoring for us in the Senate to do something, anything, to help. And do it now.

Small Business Health Plans is something I have been working on for a while with my friend, Senator Ben Nelson. I want to thank Senator Nelson for his leadership and expertise in this matter and for his steadfast support.

Step 4, the Small Business Health Plans Act, will reduce the cost of health care, especially for America's small business owners and working families. Today, of the 46 million people without health insurance in this country, 12 million people own or work for small businesses or live in families that depend on small business wages. Another 5 million are self-employed. That makes 17 million people who can't afford decent health insurance right now and would be helped by this bill.

Small Business Health Plans, SBHPs, will allow business and trade associations to band their members together across State lines and offer group health coverage to their employees. By banding groups of small businesses together on a regional or national basis, SBHPs create real purchasing power that small businesses could never have on their own. This purchasing power will allow them to negotiate for better prices and greater benefits. Just like big businesses do.

A report prepared by an independent analyst found that Small Business Health Plans would reduce health insurance costs for small business by 12 percent--in today's dollars, about $1,000 per employee--and would reduce the number of uninsured in working families by 8 percent, or approximately 1 million people. That is real relief.

The American people overwhelmingly support giving small businesses the same power that big companies have to negotiate for better benefits and better prices. And small business owners for years have been asking for the power that big businesses have, so they can secure affordable health care for their employees and their families.

Every day, emergency rooms treat more than 30,000 uninsured Americans who work for or depend on small businesses. That is at least 30,000 reasons why we need to get something done now to help create affordable, market-based choices for America's small businesses and working families.

I am a former small business owner, and I know something about the struggle to provide affordable health coverage to my own family and to my ``work family.'' And Senator Nelson is a former State insurance commissioner, so he knows something about the importance of protecting consumers.

I also want to thank Senator Gregg for his leadership on this issue. Senator Gregg has worked very hard to help find relief for small businesses, and I very much appreciate his support and thank him for being a cosponsor of this important legislation.

Let's take the first step toward more affordable health care for all Americans by giving small business owners the power to create Small Business Health Plans for themselves, their families, and their workers. Let's give them the change they are seeking instead of ``more of the same'' or more excuses for not acting.

I believe we can agree on 80 percent of the issues and on 80 percent of each issue. If we focus on that 80 percent, we can get things done. I have been and will continue to work with my colleagues and stakeholders to find that 80 percent on Small Business Health Plans to provide real relief for America's working families. The time for action is now.

Madam President, I am here today to explain the three amendments I have filed to the fiscal year 2009 budget resolution.

The Federal Government is now telling a majority of the States, which of course includes Wyoming, Montana, Colorado, New Mexico, and other States that allow for the production of minerals in their State, that an even split is not enough for the Federal Government, even though the law--the agreement in effect for years--says there will be a split. So in an attempt to satisfy an insatiable appetite for money, the administration's budget is to take more of it away from these States-- $40 million more every year. I am referring to net receipt sharing. That title kind of gives you an idea that these Federal mineral royalties are divided in half--net--that is after expenses--the sharing of receipts from mineral leasing activities on public lands. This is money that our State governments actually use for roads, for health care, for residents of our States, for education for our children, and more efficient and environmentally friendly development of our energy resources. It is money that finds its way directly to the people, not down in some bureaucratic black hole. Similar policy that was implemented in 1991 was repealed in 2000. At that time, they were stealing 1 percent after the net receipts. That led to a loss of nearly $250 million in State revenues. Now they are back again, trying to take more money away from the States. This time they said 2 percent is better. The Federal Government has maneuvered itself to be in a position where it can take an even higher percentage of our mineral royalty money.

Last year, the fiscal year 2008 Consolidated Appropriations Act took 2 percent of the net receipt sharing of Federal mineral royalties from the States. Furthermore, the administration's budget includes a plan to make permanent a 2-percent net royalty receipt sharing provision in fiscal year 2009.

I ask my colleagues now whether your State is being taken advantage of, whether you are a Democrat or a Republican, I am asking you to stand with us and support this amendment, amendment No. 4214, to restore the 2-percent net receipt sharing of Federal mineral royalties lost to the States in last year's appropriations bill. You know as well as I do that your State's money could be next.

The Federal Government collects mineral royalties from States that allow for energy production on lands in their State. Under the law, the States are entitled to half of the loyalties collected. To distribute the State share, the law intends for the Minerals Management Service to divide the amount of mineral royalties collected by two, write a check for that amount, and mail it to the States. That is all it entails. But the Federal Government's feeble excuse was that it needed an extra 2 percent share for ``administrative costs.'' Now, they have been doing this for years without the administrative costs, but they remembered there was this time they were able to steal it before, so now they are trying to steal it again and decided to double the amount. It is not anything that is done from an accounting standpoint. It is a Washington shakedown.

As an accountant, I can tell you that dividing by two and writing a check doesn't take a significant amount of time. Somehow the administration believes it deserves approximately $40 million per year to do this activity. This is logic that only happens inside the beltway, and I am telling you that it is patently unfair. If they can do it here, they will do it on other things. It drastically affects my State of Wyoming, which supplies a disproportionate share of energy to our country. Yet the Federal Government still wants more.

We need to pass my amendment not only to keep the mineral royalty system fair and equal, not only to ensure that more money is used directly to help people rather than for trumped-up administrative charges, but also to ensure that a few States aren't trapped in a corner by the administration and some in Congress who have their ideas for the money.

Unlike bureaucrats, we answer to our constituents. Mine are telling me they don't want the Federal Government to take anymore of the State's money. I am sure yours will tell you the same thing, either now or later. Think about that and support my amendment, which will help ensure the Federal Government gets a fair share but just a fair share.

I also want to speak about two amendments I filed earlier today and I will offer at a later time. One amendment, No. 4215, is designed to ensure that our States continue to receive formula funding for animal health research and disease programming. It is administered by the Cooperative State Research, Education, and Extension Service in the Department of Agriculture. This assistance allows State research institutions to carry out critical animal health research that is used in our communities.

We know that animal health is one of the greatest threats to the animal agriculture in our Nation. Recent experiences in other countries with foot-and-mouth disease, avian flu, and mad cow disease bring home the importance of how animal diseases can affect the food supply, human health, and even national economies.

In Wyoming, these funds have been used to help State officials and researchers respond to outbreaks of brucellosis in cattle and help stop incidences of blue tongue in livestock. This Animal Health Research and Disease program is an excellent investment in American agriculture. This amendment seeks to ensure that animal health formula funding is fully funded so our Nation can continue to enjoy the benefits of healthy animals and a safe food system.

The third amendment, No. 4216, concerns Ryan White CARE Act funding. Some have wondered why we need to discuss this issue. The answer is simple: We need to ensure that the authorization process and the appropriations process work in sync with each other. The budget is the first step in doing that.

I worked diligently with Senator Kennedy and others for over a year to retool our discretionary domestic HIV/AIDS care program--the Ryan White CARE Act. In putting that reauthorization together, Senator Kennedy and I did some background research. We learned that more African Americans,

more women, and more individuals in rural areas--especially in the South--are infected and dying from HIV than ever before. We learned that the old Ryan White formulas didn't count someone until they had AIDS, instead of trying to help them when they had HIV only--that is ``only'' with a very small ``o.'' We learned that the funding formulas hurt areas where most African Americans lived because they were more likely to have HIV and not AIDS. Given what we learned, Senator Kennedy and I had a principle that the money should follow the person. We realized the program had to be fairer, the money had to follow the person.

The Senate passed the revised Ryan White funding formulas by unanimous consent on December 6, 2006. A few days later, the House also passed the Ryan White program unanimously. We were all pleased when the President signed that bill and that formula into law a week or so later. Then, of course, we all worked to ensure that the Ryan White program received the appropriate funding for those newly revised funding formulas. You can imagine my dismay when, during the appropriations process last year, the Ryan White funding formulas were hijacked for other purposes. As noted by the GAO, one provision, which was called on the Senate floor a ``Pelosi fix,'' funneled $4.8 million away to the San Francisco metropolitan area, or EMA, from all of the other cities receiving funding. In other words, one city changed the formula in appropriations, as opposed to authorization, and stole money from the other cities to give themselves a level of funding that was not related to the people who had HIV. GAO also noted that ``the San Francisco EMA continues to be the only urban area whose formula funding is based on both living and deceased AIDS cases.'' I will repeat that-- ``deceased AIDS cases.'' San Francisco continues to receive funding for dead people.

So, in effect, this misguided appropriations process took money from the growing population of individuals infected with HIV, including African Americans, women, and people living in rural areas, so that San Francisco could receive more dollars. This is further infuriating because a recent report by the HHS Office of the Inspector General noted that in the last 5 years, San Francisco has been unable to spend all of the funds it has received. This simply doesn't make sense.

Therefore, I hope this year we will start the debate off right and reaffirm our commitment to those who have the HIV domestically by standing by our newly revised Ryan White funding formulas, which passed by unanimous consent in both Houses, and were addressed in an amendment referred to the budget where, again, those people objected to having money stolen from their funds to go to a community that didn't follow the authorization funding. So we don't want it funneled off for inappropriate purposes. That is why I will be offering this amendment, and I hope the Senate will be able to accept it.

I yield the floor.

I ask unanimous consent that the order for the quorum call be rescinded.

I ask unanimous consent to speak as in morning business.

Mr. President, I rise to discuss my concerns with the fiscal security of our country. This week we are considering the fiscal year 2009 congressional budget resolution in the Budget Committee. As stewards of the public trust, the Congress needs to make hard choices necessary to leave a fiscally and economically sound country to our children and grandchildren. Unfortunately, the easy road is where we have already trod. The budget we will be working on today is another slip of paper in a trail leading this country to financial ruin. We simply cannot sustain the current level of spending which is spiraling out of control. I know that crafting an annual budget is a difficult task, but it is important. This document is a vital part of the operation of Congress. It sets a fiscal blueprint that Congress will follow for the year and establishes procedural hurdles when these guidelines are ignored. As stewards of the public trust, we owe to it all American taxpayers to use the funds they provide us in the most effective and efficient means possible. If we do that, we provide future generations with a strong and secure U.S. economy. If we don't, then the children of America's future will be waking up to something very unpleasant.

As an accountant, I particularly enjoy this opportunity to look at the overall spending priorities of our Nation. Fiscal year 2009 will be another tight year for spending. It will not be good enough to have another pass-the-buck Democratic budget like the one we saw last year, which I did not support. If we consider another budget this year that is tax and spend, more and more taxes to pay for more and more spending, I will vote against it again. We must begin this year's debate on a fiscal year 2009 congressional budget resolution with a clear understanding of our responsibilities. We cannot accept a repeat of last year's empty promises, of reducing the debt and reforming entitlements.

What actually happened is disgraceful. Last year's budget raised taxes $736 billion, the largest tax increase ever, hitting 116 million people. If we follow this year's proposed budget, many of our constituents will have to dig into their pockets starting in 2011 and find an additional $2,000 to pay Uncle Sam on top of what they pay in taxes now. That ought to be a wake-up call. I travel around Wyoming most weekends. I can easily take a poll of my constituents. I am not running into anybody who thinks they are paying too little in taxes. If they think their taxes are going to go up, knowing that the Federal Government is receiving more in revenues than it ever has in the history of the United States, they are upset. So looking at a $736 billion tax increase will upset them. We are going to be discussing this as it gets closer and closer to April 15. That is the day they are particularly cognizant of what they are paying in taxes.

Last year's budget increased spending by $205 billion. Last year's budget grew our national debt by $2.5 trillion. Last year's budget ignored entitlement reform. There was no attempt to tackle the $66 trillion in unsustainable long-term entitlement obligations that face us. Well, not us; it is our children and grandchildren. But we will be the beneficiaries of that. That is not fair. Americans want to know what we can do to help them, not hurt them. Empty promises can no longer be made.

I want to highlight a recent editorial from the Wall Street Journal that talks about spending promises being made right now. I ask unanimous consent that the editorial be printed in the Record.

The majority should be held responsible for its actions. We need to prepare a budget for our Nation that reduces national debt, promotes honest budgeting, and encourages true economic growth by reducing energy costs, reducing taxes, and reducing health care costs. I do believe that the first priority of any nation must be the health of its people. Every American should have access to high quality health care at affordable prices, and Congress must work with State governments and the private sector to achieve that goal. One way Congress can curtail this rapid rise in health care costs is to use health information technology as a cost-saving measure. I hope we can work across party lines to enact health IT legislation this year and to aid in addressing the fiscal challenges associated with spiraling costs and unacceptable levels of medical errors.

I wonder if the American people realize that when the baby boomers are fully retired and receiving benefits, the cost of supporting that generation through Medicare, Medicaid, Social Security will be so high we will have no money available for our Federal Government to do anything else. We will have no money for national defense, no money for education, no money for transportation infrastructure, not to mention a whole bunch of other things we are intricately expecting. That is unacceptable. Our country's future cannot sustain the cost.

This year, again, the President's budget proposes to reduce the rate of growth in one of our most expensive entitlements, which is Medicare. The President has sent a legislative proposal to Congress to meet the requirements laid out in the Medicare Modernization Act passed in 2003, thus providing more funding for the general fund that pays for other government programs such as defense, education, and infrastructure. What reception did it get from our friends in the majority? Unfortunately, we have heard that the proposal sent by the administration is dead on arrival and the administration has trumped up a phony crisis in Medicare. A phony crisis? There is nothing phony about it. We are standing at the edge of a tsunami as the huge baby boomer generation, my generation, reaches Medicare and Social Security eligibility.

The President's Medicare proposal is a good starting point; $34 trillion of unfunded liability is certainly not a phony crisis in Medicare. We must address this serious funding constraint head on.

Last year the majority also promised to abide by pay-go rules and actually pay for all the new spending to get America on the right track economically. As far as I can see, this has not happened. In fact, pay- go enforcement rules have been so weakened and thwarted through a variety of different mechanisms and smoke and mirrors that we ended up with billions and billions in new spending that is not offset. It is time to bite the bullet. We need to limit increases in discretionary spending by Federal Government agencies. This is necessary while we are also taking extreme care to keep our Nation safe and secure. I reiterate that we must take seriously the warnings we have heard from the General Accounting Office and the Congressional Budget Office about Federal expenditures spiraling out of control. We need to make the budget procedural and process changes to directly address this problem.

One of the many procedural reforms I believe would promote fiscal responsibility and safeguard the Nation's economic health is a 2-year budget process. In fact, in his budget for fiscal year 2009, the President once again proposed commonsense budget reforms to restrain spending. He has several recommendations, including earmark reforms and the adoption of a 2-year budget for all executive branch agencies in order to give Congress more time for program review. While we may negotiate on the details, we should implement these overall recommendations. The budget process takes up a considerable amount of time each year and is drenched in partisan politics while other important issues are put on the back burner. It should not be this way. The current Federal system, frankly, is broken. No, it is smashed. It is in shambles. We only have to look at the mammoth spending bills that nobody has time to fully read or understand before they are glibly passed into law and the hammer comes down on another nail in the coffin of good budgeting.

Last year's omnibus appropriations bill is Exhibit A in my prosecution of a system that promotes fiscal recklessness. It is a serious problem that must be fixed. The current budget and appropriations system lends itself to spending indulgences this country cannot afford. It should be scrapped for a system that is a proven winner.

To divert slightly and remind us of some of what happened last year as we were going through the process, we passed authorization bills around here which are supposed to set the grand parameters for what we are doing. One of those grand parameters involved the AIDS bill, passed unanimously through this body and through the other body and signed by the President. We set up a formula for AIDS help. That formula said the money will follow the patient. Good concept, good enough for everybody to agree it was the way to go. Then last year we had to vote on a $6 million proposal for San Francisco that stole money from 42 other cities in large amounts and smaller amounts from many other cities. We defeated that because we had set up a formula through authorization. But when the final omnibus bill came out, it had that same $6 million with the same theft put in it. We didn't have an opportunity then because $6 million out of $767 billion is not enough to worry about voting on, I guess. And we don't vote on it. But it still wound up in there.

We need to do something with our system of budgeting, and we need to do something about earmarks as well. There is a crucial need to enact procedural and process changes that will enable us to get this country on the right budgetary track. We simply cannot risk the economic stability of future generations by continuing to get by with the status quo. The risks are far too great.

Make no mistake: A change to a new budget process will not be easy. There are very strong feelings on both sides of this issue. But as responsible legislators, we need to come together to begin the difficult but necessary process of change. I, for one, intend to continue to work with my colleagues who are also committed to make the hard choices to safeguard our economic and fiscal future.

A nation that cannot pay its bills is a nation that is in trouble. If it is a repeat of last year, the fiscal year 2009 congressional budget resolution could mortgage the future of our children and grandchildren and require huge tax increases for all Americans. I welcome the opportunity to consider our Nation's spending priorities, keeping in mind we need to make tough choices and sacrifices in order to keep our country strong and healthy.

Mr. President, I yield the floor.